


On a Red Field

by beetle



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Future, Amnesia, Angst, Attempted Murder, BDSM, Brain Damage, Canon-Typical Violence, Cults, Dark, Dominant Masochism, Drug Use, Drug-Induced Sex, Drugged Sex, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Masochism, Mental Breakdown, Moral Bankruptcy, Narcissism, No Apocalypse, Non-Graphic Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Partial amnesia, Past Brainwashing, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Relationship(s), Past Torture, Psychological Trauma, Redemption, Religion, Smut, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-01-23 12:11:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12507136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: A prologue in which nothingtooterribly unprecedented happens . . . a no ‘count Courier of little appreciable conscience or morals, and who specializes in moving extra-legal items, gets betrayed. Then summarily dispatched in an anonymous bit of desert, by a man with a famous name and eye-watering taste in suits.And dying’s a stone-bitch—an infinite one, at that—but it’s also just the beginning.





	1. Prologue: The Doomed Courier

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: No Apocalypse AU. Canon clinical narcissism, canon clinical psychopathy/lack of empathy, many cases of askew morality/ethics. Messianic Complex. Violence. Mentions of a dangerous cult, child abuse, brainwashing, abduction, alcoholism, various illegal activities, drug use, torture, attempted murder, and murder. Mentions of past-noncon, dub-con, and drugged/drug-induced sex. Probably some BDSM and rough sex, too. I’ll also warn BEFORE each chapter and add to tags as needed.

**Prologue: The Doomed Courier**

 

Despite having had a comprehensive—nigh exhaustive—list of ways he was _likely_ to end up dead kept handy and updated in his head, the way he actually _did_ die, wasn’t a possibility that’d made it to the forefront of his brooding mind, let alone to his long-list of likelihoods.

 

Not because he’d expected to _never_ die, or never to even have a gun to his head, no. In his chosen livelihood, that of _specialties courier_ , he’d not only come to expect such eventualities, but had stared his own violent near-death in the face a handful of times, already. And each subsequent rescue or escape from _that_ vexingly common work-hazard had been more unbelievable and providential—amusing than the last.

 

But, never let it be said that his gift for gab, the Blarney passed down from his mutt-father’s side of the family, hadn’t wound up serving him well, indeed. He’d talked himself out of death _far_ more frequently than the several times he’d been caught/waylaid by aggressive, trigger-happy enemies and competition.

 

The reason that the final moment, _the end_ had been such a surprise—shocking beyond even the feelings of betrayal and confusion and _rage_ that he’d felt—had been because of whose finger was on the trigger.

 

When he’d woken up, already struggling sluggishly and twitching like a frog on a hot skillet, he’d instantly begun tugging on his tightly-bound wrists, while trying to make sense of the voices he’d heard talking and laughing. Tried to make sense of the unmistakable sound of _digging_.

 

He hadn’t had to try hard or long.

 

Because even though he’d been disoriented—and thinking through a head that felt like it’d already been plugged with lead—he’d understood the significance of sand being shoveled. Of what it had meant when combined with his bonfire-bright/dreamlike-dark, flickering surroundings, framed by the smear of the Milky Way above and gritty-coarse sand below.

 

In light of being trussed up and helpless in an anonymous bit of desert . . . he’d understood the digging-sounds _instantly_. He still hadn’t understood the middle of his story—none of which was anything but chaotic and rather pointless—nor even the beginning, with its banal and almost laughable tragedies.

 

Nope, he’d understood the _end_. Not the where-fors and whys of it, but that those didn’t even matter. They never had. What had mattered and was, in its own way, all the explanation he’d ever need—and certainly all that he’d ever _get_ —was that betrayal, even _impersonal_ betrayal, was simply the air in which humanity moved and existed. Like a parasite or weed, humanity proliferated on the misery and death of its brethren.

 

 _This_ had been the archetype he’d chosen to embody and the truth in which he’d chosen to wallow. The end he’d tacitly chosen to accept as valid and inevitable by his very lifestyle and actions. Of course, it had been. From an early age, betrayal had been all he’d been able to rely on. His only example of consistency and reliability. It had always been as evident a constant as gravity, betrayal.

 

Even death at one hundred and two, in one’s bed, surrounded by loving great-grandchildren, was a betrayal. The conspiring of one’s own fallible flesh against the spirit animating it.

 

But _this_ betrayal, this _end,_ hadn’t been anything so passive. It’d been pointed. _Planned_. And he, of all people, should’ve expected nothing less. For a job this big to have fallen in his lap so damned _easily_. . . .

 

This whole thing had smacked of conspiracy from the get-go, had he been smart enough to see it. And even if he’d got told the ins and outs of it—those where-fors and whys—before he got plugged and planted, he’d still be just putrefying meat in a shallow grave shortly thereafter.

 

Each chuff-chuck of gritty sand and chop at hardy, stubborn scrub-vegetation had seemed to be coughing his name. Calling to him like the least seductive siren _ever_.

 

Finally, the digging and sundry sounds of exertion had stopped.

 

“Got what you were after,” a man’s voice had said, suddenly louder than the siren-digging. Coming from the direction of that orange flicker-flare. The voice’d been rough and negligent. Almost laughing, as if the speaker had just done something easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, and was already bored and thinking of other fun things to do. “So, pay up.”

 

A different voice had sounded, then, in a soft, wry-dry chuckle. “You’re cryin’ in the rain, pally,” this familiar, Vegas-posh drawl had said, causing him to stop struggling to free himself, and _start_ struggling to roll over and face the engineer of his end.

 

“Well, well . . . guess who’s wakin’ up, ovah heah,” a _third_ voice had said, snide, nasally-sounding, and stereotypically _back-east_. Like New Jersey, or some other East Coast shit-hole north of Delaware but south of Massachusetts.

 

“Time to cash-out,” that second voice had said, still gentle but also amused, as if all his prisoner’s last-ditch struggling and fighting for his _life_ had been some sort of mildly entertaining improv.

 

And he’d known. He’d fucking _known_ , even as he’d finally managed to flop onto his back. Even as he’d fought to blink his blurred and doubled vision clear.

 

 _Conspiracy_ , he’d told himself bitterly, as he’d eyed the boxy, black-and-white checked jacket and approaching zoot-suit baggy trousers. That bitter voice had gone on grimly, sounding exactly like his old man’s had after he’d finally sobered up and found religion: gravelly, disappointed, and more grunt than grammar. _Lies and betrayals, boy. That’s all ya_ get _, mixin’ with the unrighteous and walkin’ the devil’s road. Ya_ live _in that life and ya gonna_ die _in that life. ‘_ Course _y’are. D’ja expect any different?_ Really _?_

 

 _Naw, Pop, not really_ , he’d told that rough-sad voice. He’d smirked, hard and angry, around his spitty-dusty gag as he’d glared up at a passingly familiar, blandly handsome face. It was like seeing a television star from yester-year in person, almost. Only minus the wistful nostalgia and plus his certain demise. _Guess I just reckoned I’d have more time to find my way back out of all this. Figured I’d have_ time _to find a way to make some kinda amends for the awful shit I’ve done and had a hand in. Might be I’m wrong, though_. . . .

 

Francis “Benny” Sinatra— _no relation to the crooner_ , as Benny’d always been the first to say, upon meeting everyone, even the man he’d been about plant like a geranium—had smirked down at him, pulled-together and slick, charming and smooth. An empty-pale, blue gaze that _could’ve_ belonged to Ol’ Blue Eyes, had watched him struggle and growl and glare with detached pity.

 

Then Benny’d snorted silently and flicked away his half-smoked cig. It’d somersaulted into the night—just a tiny torch of barely-visible white and the baleful-orange flare of the cherry-end—disappearing in seconds, into its own grave of sand and scrub.

 

“Will you just get it over with, man?” the first voice had said from Benny’s right, sounding impatient, all of a sudden. The speaker had been tall and prison-bruiser tough-looking, all boxy, muscular build and desert-dusty, dark skin. But for the desert-dust, he’d looked like a casting extra from _Warriors_.

 

Standing on Benny’s other side, looking like he’d just stepped out of a Sid Vicious bio-pic, had been some skinny, pierced and punk d-bag with an orange-tipped faux-hawk. Probably the Jersey-Boy.

 

Even in the midst of his own worst nightmare come horribly true, he’d found it in him to snort a laugh and roll his eyes as if to say: _Really, man? C’moooon_. It’d earned him Jersey-Boy’s petulant glare, as well as the other man gripping a big, wooden bat like he’d been aiming to use it.

 

“Maybe cons kill people without lookin’ ‘em in the face,” Benny’d said with that lofty sort of dryness, as the light from the nearby bonfire or whatever flickered all up and down his right side. It’d made his masklike, anodyne-attractive face seem to shift and writhe as if dissolving to reveal whatever hideous and commonplace truth lay underneath. “But _I_ ain’t a fink. Dig?”

 

 _Did this asshole just say “fink” and “dig”? For_ reals _?_ he’d wondered with another incredulous, snorting laugh, his eyes closing tight briefly. _My biggest regret is that I’m gonna die at this Rat Pack wannabe’s manicured hands. And . . . and maybe that I won’t get to see Cade one last time . . . maybe tell him I’m sorry about . . . everything. . . ._

 

And even though Cade’d probably already guessed that—had likely sussed out what was blowing in the weeds _long_ before his dense, egotistical, and _self-centered_ on-again/off-again had—guessing and knowing were two beasts with a _world_ of difference between them.

 

 _Too little, too late to blow anyone any damn good_ , he’d castigated himself grimly. _Story of my goddamn life. Or it was._

 

And that story’d been about to come to a sudden but not unforeseen end. Even Pop’d seen the end coming, from nearly a decade past. Before his wayward, ne’er-do-well son had run off to Vegas with a gleam in his eye and visions of filthy lucre dancing in his greedy heart. . . .

 

Huffing and focusing once more Benny’s pale-flickering face, he’d growled harder and louder. Rocked a bit, trying to sit up or something— _anything_ —so as not to go to his shallow, sandy grave like a rube or a coward. Not that it mattered. Whatever he had been or had tried to be, he’d be going into the _ground_. There hadn’t been any getting around that. The only consolation had been that, since this was professional, not personal, at least he wasn’t likely to be going in _still alive_.

 

There were always worse things than death. And depending on the who playing Grim Reaper, sometimes that _worse thing_ was the _dying_ , itself.

 

His death was all about expedience, not example. And that was the only stroke of goddamned luck he’d had while on this disastrous run to Vegas.

 

“Ya made your last delivery, kid,” Benny had informed him, so soft and apologetic, his regret had been almost believable. And then, after reaching into his pocket, the infamous lieutenant of House Industries (and of Robert House’s less publicly known and far less kosher _Vegas Syndicate_ ) had pulled out a poker chip. Then he’d flipped it in the air like a coin, before catching it and disappearing it into thin air, with what resulted in a strange moment of undiluted wonder for his captive audience.

 

Benny’s goons, however, had seemed less than impressed. The Jersey-Boy’d even rolled his squinty, ratty little eyes.

 

Blinking—and letting his pointless struggles taper to a stop—this time, he hadn’t even bothered to laugh. If there’d been significance to the poker chip and magic trick, some analogy or affect, he’d never find out what it was. All his finding out-days had been over the moment he’d accepted this Vegas-run.

 

“Sorry ya got caught up in this scene,” Benny had said a bit belatedly, sighing as he’d pulled a huge revolver out of his jacket, from the same place he’d retrieved the damned poker chip. The thing had been a fucking _hand-cannon_ , like something Al Capone might have slept with under his pillow. But Benny’d nonetheless handled it easily, gracefully, flicking off the safety as casually as he’d done everything else. His smile had been almost self-deprecating. “From where _you’re_ sittin’, this must seem like an eighteen-karat run of bad luck.”

 

_Sorry, Pop. Sorry Cade. Sorry . . . Mom. . . ._

 

His final regrets, such as they’d been, had felt more like undeserved comfort. As if, despite having realized it too late, he had been truly sorry and penitent. _Repentant_. Not just that he hadn’t _made better_ choices—though, _yeah_ , that, too . . . like, _a lot_ —but that he hadn’t _been_ _better_.

 

A better son to Paddy Delgado, who had, himself, been a _shitty_ parent until the loss of his long-suffering wife had rearranged his drunken, abusive paradigm.

 

A better fuck-buddy/friend-with-bennies/lover/not-quite-boyfriend/ _whatever_ to Cade Gannon, the only guy who’d ever _meant_ anything in his cesspool of an existence since running off from home nine years ago.

 

A better person, of the sort who would maybe get mourned should he disappear completely. Or at least have a Missing Persons Report filed in his absence, for all the good it would’ve done.

 

A better _man_.

 

As it’d stood, however . . . even if his Pop had still been alive, he’d surely written his foolish, headstrong only child off as dead, and grieved for him years ago. And Arcade would probably, after a couple months, assume his flaky, commitment-phobe booty-caller had gotten itchy feet—or indeed had fallen prey to some sort of well-deserved and well-earned foul-play—and do whatever was cathartic then move on.

 

It wasn’t as if a gorgeous, smart med-student who could suck dick like a pro and bluff the ass off anyone at Texas Hold ‘Em would exactly have _trouble—in Vegas—_ catching and keeping a _far_ better replacement for what he’d been settling for.

 

Even in the face of his death, it had been _this_ that’d rankled and burned and ached. Not that his place in the world would be soon filled and himself soon forgotten. It’d been that he’d never _had_ a place. Had never been _memorable_ except when he’d taken pains to remind others of his existence.

 

He’d be dying in moments, but the truth was . . . he’d never really existed to begin with, it’d seemed.

 

And with that realization, it had been over for him. Just . . . finished. All of it. Done, in a moment of simple, but intense clarity. Not just his recent life, but all that’d come before and surely any remembrances of him that would have come after. Because it was likely that there would be _no such remembrances._ He’d not been the sort of person anyone had ever willingly recalled _at all_ , let alone with fondness or affection. Death would be unlikely to change that fact. And might, in fact, simply cement it.

 

That was, he’d accepted rather serenely, probably for the best, all told. He’d never done anyone, even himself, a damned bit of good in twenty-six years on this planet. It’d be best that all the _nothing_ he’d been and the nothing he’d _stood for_ , would be scrapped completely and quietly.

 

 _Well_ , he’d thought with calm gallows’ humor, still eyeing that damned hand-cannon of a blunderbuss. _Prolly not_ quietly. _Talk about the shot heard ‘round the world_. . . .

 

Then, he’d let his eyes drift up to the empty, but satisfied blue ones of Francis-goddamn-Sinatra-no-fucking-relation. He’d held that pitying, but merciless gaze for eternal moments because that’d been the closest he’d ever get to last words. So, he’d tried to make that final stare-down _count_. Even though he’d known that it didn’t and wouldn’t. That _nothing_ had or ever _would_.

 

 _You_ are _a fink, Benny . . ._ dig _? The_ original _rat-fink motherfucker,_ he’d seethed coldly, but with wide, dark eyes that’d been hot and throbbing. As if he’d become a mind-reader, Benny’d smiled with both mild regret and lazy sardonicism.

 

“Sorry, kid, but the truth is,” he’d said, his brow unfurrowed as he’d leveled his parodically large revolver with that same ease and grace. With a steady, precise arm. His voice had been solemn and almost confessional as he’d put the slightest of pressures on the trigger, and cocked the hammer back. “ _Truth is_ . . . the game was rigged from the start.”

 

 _No shit, Sherlock,_ he’d replied via a slow, contemptuous blink. Then, nonetheless smirking around his gag, he’d still continued to hold that stare-down as, at the last second, Benny’s baby-blues had shifted slightly, off into the night. But just enough to be a satisfying final victory for a man who’d never won anything, anyway. Never really existed.

 

Then, reality had frozen on an infinite note of explosive sound. Even as it had been _consumed_ by the white-orange bloom of flame.

 

There’d been _fire_ in the air. In his eyes. In his head.

 

And, _oh_ , but it’d burned so _bright_ —the unfurling of agony in his skull . . . then the death and _eternity_ that had followed closely on its heels—that even though _he, himself_ , had ceased to be, the heat-suffering- _dissolution_ of dying refused to.

 

 _This is_ , he would have surely understood—had he still _been_ , let alone been in any shape to make such distinctions— _my Hell: an endless, tortuous, escalating spiral, downward and inward without end, yet never failing to grow exponentially_ worse _with every passing moment. And I_ have _earned_ each and every moment.

 

 _Hell_. It was nothing less than that. And it was to go on—and on and on, and on and _on_ —in a way that Patrick Michael Delgado, Jr., had _not_ , and never again would.

 

TBC


	2. A Friend in Need is a Friend, Indeed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What’s on the chapter title-tin. And a bit more, besides. The Courier finds a new life, a new home, at least one new friend, and a new quandary in the Mojave Desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Killing of a predator-animal. Mental illness brought about by a physical condition. Mental . . . untidiness/disjointedness. Dissociative disorder, including: fugue-states, amnesia, and detachment. Delusional-thinking. Liberties taken with the locations of certain towns, throughout. Especially Goodsprings.
> 
>  **Also Note (11/07/2017):** I got rid of the "Alternate Universe - Modern Setting" tag as I realized this fic is set at about the same time in the canon timeline as New Vegas. Only the setting for this AU is more like a projection of what our current, Real Life-world would be like in two hundred years, with no Apocalypse (at least, as such . . . this world didn't end with a bang, it's end _ing_ with a whimper) but the same characters and commensurate technologies/social issues.

 

It was a longer time after his resurrection than he could mentally keep track of—going on three-quarters of a year—before the only stranger in Goodsprings made his first real friend.

 

His first friend who _wasn’t_ constantly slipping (or _purposely_ doing so, as a kindness to the lonely, beloved town doctor who’d helped birth more than half of them) and calling him by a dead boy’s name, more and more as days went by. Or, worse, gazing at him in silent adoration and relief, with tears of gratitude shining in his bloodshot eyes.

 

But usually, it was both. Intensely, disturbingly _both_.

 

“Cameron,” Doc Mitchell’d whisper when he sometimes got turned around in his mind. The stranger had no way of predicting these turned-around moments, but for the increasingly broken-open glaze in the man’s already tender brown eyes, which would quickly fill with those grateful tears as he shook his head in disbelief. “I _thought_ . . . I been visitin’ you _every_ evening since I put you in the Cemetery, y’know? An’ every October nineteenth, that pretty little gal of yours and her dog come along. We all eat birthday cake—with the buttercream frosting!—till twilight. Then she walks me home. Sometimes, she calls me _Pa_ and takes my arm. She’s a _good woman_. Wish you’da married her, like you was always on about, but . . . but you went and _left_ , and . . . I missed you _so bad, son_. . . .”

 

And it’d only devolve from there. Until the elderly doctor was sobbing like his heart’d up and broken all over again. Until his “son,”—the one whom he’d put in the ground then, ten years later, occasionally thought he’d pulled right back out . . . on said son’s birthday, no less—was forced to relearn what it was to be human. To extend a compassion and empathy he didn’t quite remember, or _want_ to remember how to feel or even exemplify. Not even to a man who’d not only saved his life, but taken him in and shown him more care and patience than the stranger knew what to do with. Or how to repay.

 

At first, however, the stranger had tried. Tried to be more . . . human. Less . . . whatever he was, now. His success was practically nonexistent at that futile endeavor. His pre-Bullet self was as shadowy, mysterious, and beyond-reach as the night sky, but with no starshine to illuminate it, or the landscape below on which the stranger found himself stranded.

 

“Stranger” the people of Goodsprings called him, except for Doc Mitchell, Sunny Smiles, and Vic Pepper (who never called him anything at all, if he could help it. And he mostly could), and the title was exactingly apt. It fit so well— _more_ well than any other name anyone occasionally tried, with or without the stranger’s apathetic shrugs and blinks of allowance—that most people stopped trying to call him anything else. And the people of Goodsprings were, he understood, _right_ to call him so. He answered to the moniker without offense or hesitation, for it was the truth of him, stated succinctly. Even to himself, he was little more than an empty, yawning vessel, void of even a fading echo of whom he’d once been, whom he’d once _wanted to be_ , and what his character, personality, and ambitions may have once been before the advent of _The Bullet_ and his grave.

 

It wasn’t that he felt nothing . . . simply that he had no way of regulating the feelings that seethed and roiled under his placid-thick surface. No way to express the white noise-cyclone that made it impossible to think most of the time. No reserves or prior experience to fall back on when it came to parsing and defusing the anger and anxiety. No real way to cope with the occasional days when he hadn’t even the energy to roll over, let alone get out of a dead boy’s bed.

 

Though, through the pulling of some legal strings—and extra-legal ones—eventually the stranger wound up keeping that dead boy’s bed and room, and wearing that dead boy’s name on a paper- and digital-trail. Still, the only ones who called him by that new, legit name were the doc, whether he was turned-around or not, and Sunny Smiles. But not often. Only when she slipped, and her dark eyes had gone soft and somewhat more open. When she _smiled_ at him, as if she, too, was seeing a long-gone boy when she looked at him.

 

But whenever he watched the elderly doctor cry his eyes and his heart out over his dead child, the stranger grew afraid. _Adamant_ against feeling much of _anything_ besides a deep, but vague discomfort, and a keen awareness that he really was a true stranger. Not merely to the town of Goodsprings, but to the rest of humanity.

 

He was broken or in some way incomplete. Unfinished.

 

For, though he was always aware of a dim _obligation_ to offer comfort to his savior, and definite instincts to _want_ to comfort the old man—the grief-loony _father_ of a boy who’d never finish his growing up—his _other_ instinct held greater sway. The instinct-warning to _play it close to the vest_ always overruled his buried, malformed sense of empathy and compassion.

 

Thus, uncertain of how and afraid to even try to offer whatever custom or compassion demanded, eventually, the stranger— _Stranger_ —would just walk away from the doctor’s moments of grief and weakness. It was kindest for them both, he’d decided. Less messy.

 

 _Whenever_ Doc Mitchell got to talking about or to his dead kid—or even his long-dead wife, Belinda-May—Stranger learned to walk away and put some distance between them. He’d spend hours wandering around the dusty, dying town he’d found himself in. He’d put his nearly _tabula rasa_ mind to nothing but escaping from _his own_ nascent softness and kindness and _weakness_. From the nightmare-maelstrom that bubbled just below the surface of him.

 

Wandering around Goodsprings and increasingly further afield, sometimes with Sunny Smiles and Cheyenne, often times not, was good for drying up treacherous tears and extant emotions. Good for keeping his eyes and heart dry . . . tough and brittle as century-old jerky.

 

The simplicity of the close outskirts of the mighty Mojave, and of alone-ness and _silence_ , appealed to him, as well. It made the fact that he could barely string together complex thoughts, most of the time—let alone remember his life before being shot in the head—of less importance than the sound of the gritty, scouring wind.

 

And, as time went on, the lingering side effects of having The Bullet still lodged in his brain eased, some. He experienced fewer skull-aches and migraines, fewer black-out rages. Less light-sensitivity. Less severe panic attacks. And even the fainting spells, intense disorientation, and fugues seemed to happen less often.

 

His default emotional state, however—such as it was—seemed to be what the doc and his frequent visitor, Vic Pepper, called _dissociative_. And it persisted. Increased. _Deepened_.

 

Sometimes, the doc and Vic would get to talking about Stranger and _around him_ , as if he wasn’t even there, bandying about fancy terms, such as _lack of affect_ or _sluggish startle-reflex and response;_ _Conservation of Resources theory_ and _emotional burnout_.

 

And, from Vic—who had a tendency to rarely look at the subject of his musings, and then when he did, as if at a broken bit of equipment or an unattractive piece of furniture—the talk would always meander back to some version of: “He may just be a simpleton and a sociopath, Emmett. Whatever he _once_ was, what he is _now_ is unstable and devoid of any sort of ability to empathize or relate to others. Not to mention, as we’ve seen, he can be _dangerous_. One day or other, he could just up and kill you on a whim, or while in a rage or a moment of dissociation, without any _intent_ to cause you harm. But that won’t make you any less dead, will it? He’s _broken_ , and probably beyond repair. Maybe that ain’t his fault. Maybe that _is_. But _you_ can’t coddle and love him into sanity, purpose, and _humanity_.”

 

And, then, the doc’s earnest, but sometimes poetical reply would amount to: “Victor Pepper! My Cam’s no simpleton! He’s a _sad_ boy, yes, but he’s also a _good_ one. I _know_ it. I’ve _always_ known it. He’s got my _Belinda-May’s_ heart, deep as a river and gentle as a doe. I’ve _met_ sociopaths, psychopaths, and antisocials—met evil, wrong-souled men. More’n my fair share. And _my boy_ ain’t any of those. He’s dissociating as a defense mechanism, and no wonder! Detached, you bet! Because bein’ that way’s a _helluva_ lot safer and smarter than _not_ , these days! But he _ain’t_ evil. Just scared. Hurt and scared and _sad_.”

 

Vic’s eyes, a pale, tense, but otherwise unreadable blue would deign to settle on the _object_ under discussion, and he’d smile, thin and condescending.

 

“If you say so, Emmett. Just be careful, is all _I’m_ sayin’.”

 

“Psssh!” the elderly doctor would reply, waving his hand, and smiling over at his erstwhile “son.” In those moments, with something unsettling, hot, and ruthless swirling in him like the beginnings of a different sort of maelstrom—one aimed entirely at Vic—Stranger had trouble taking an adequate breath for a bit. Where the doc’s occasional talking over Stranger was more fatherly than anything, Vic's talking over him was an utter refutation of his basic sentience and humanity. So much so, that even Stranger sometimes wondered why the man’d gone to all the trouble of pulling his carcass out of the ground, when it was so obvious Victor Pepper frequently wished he hadn’t.

 

But just the kindly, loving light in the old doc’s mild brown eyes, tired and concerned, would be enough to settle that maelstrom for a little while longer. Until the _next time_ Vic Pepper needed putting up with or suffering.

 

“From where most folks sit, your emotional landscape is as featureless and still as the Badlands, I reckon. Blasted and utterly sere. Nothin’ lives there and nothin’ changes. Nothin’ _grows_ , and all is arid and harsh and hazardous,” the doc’d say later, after seeing Vic to the door. Once Vic was down the walk and lost to the purple, Goodsprings twilight, the doc’d come to stand before Stranger, who’d usually still be sitting placidly on the living room sofa.

 

Doc would look Stranger over with a depth of compassion and fondness that seemed impossible. Then he’d sigh and place a trembling, but strong hand on his shoulder (reaching up to do so if Stranger had gotten restless and stood up. One of the few things Stranger knew about himself—none of which was his name or his past—was that he was the tallest resident of Goodsprings. Taller, even, than Vic Pepper’s well-proportioned six-two by almost two inches. But he was also, as the doc frequently put it: _longer and leaner than a Yukon winter)_.

 

“I’m sad to say, m’boy, that that’s all _some people_ , like Vic, will _ever_ see in you. The sad and crazy bits. The broken and shattered bits. But that’s not all _I_ see, Cameron. And I doubt that’s all _Sunny_ sees, either. Or Cheyenne, for that matter. And that’s not all _you_ see or feel or _are_ , either, when you can bear to do any of those things. If it was, I reckon you wouldn’t fight seeing and feeling and _being more_ so damned _hard_.”

 

To that, as to most anything that wasn’t a direct question with a yes or no answer, Stranger’d simply stared and blinked in his usual unaffected, robotic fashion.

 

But the doc’d never taken offense. Would usually just squeeze Stranger’s shoulder and turn his chatter to other things, moving about his huge, rambling, dusty old house with his former-patient and current guest trailing him like a lost, but obedient hound.

 

#

 

And thus, it was almost nine months since some near-final reflex flailed his twitching, dirty arm out of his own shallow grave—thence to be exhumed by Vic Pepper, then carried by the same, as well as a providentially nearby Doc Mitchell and Sunny Smiles—that Stranger made that first friend.

 

He was some miles east of Goodsprings, following one of thousands of dusty, centuries-old trails worn by the feet of ancient tribes who no longer existed, and also by the people who’d ushered those tribes into the annals of history. These trails felt sacred to him, in a way nothing else did, not even his own life. He never walked on them, merely beside them. He listened with his feet to the stories of travel and the subtle histories they imparted.

 

His dusty, secondhand, broken-in boots raised little dust as he followed the story of _this_ particular trail. His faded blue jeans almost bagged on him, despite being the slimmest straight-legs available at the general store. They were belted to the last loop and still hung low on his skinny hips, aided by his tucked-in, tan t-shirt.  The front of the shirt bore a logo across the chest that meant nothing to him.

 

Slung over his shoulder by a strap, was the doc’s old, bolt-action rifle: a Weatherby Mark V which, despite Vic Pepper’s protests, the old man had given him, as well as plenty of ammo.

 

“Man’s gotta have protection walkin’ the desert like Cam does, Vic,” had been the doc’s reasoning one early evening. Vic, over for dinner rather early, had scoffed, his eyes narrowed and assessing as he gazed slightly up into the face of the only person in town who was taller than him. And he’d watched that person hold the rifle as if uncertain what it was, then huffed.

 

“Are we even sure he knows what a rifle _is_ , let alone how to use one safely or effectively?” Vic’d asked in his calmly snooty and dismissive way, his gaze drifting waspishly to the doc—

 

—only to dart right back, as he'd started and flinched. Then backed away, trying to zig-zag out of sighting range even as that rifle had been aimed at and kept a fixed bead on his left eye . . . held stock-still by long, relaxed arms, and hands that were steady and sure.

 

“I know,” Stranger’d told Vic and the doc, his normally rusty and mumbling-soft voice gone distinct and hard . . . and as flat as his unmoved affect. The look of discomfort and fear on Vic Pepper’s face had been satisfying, indeed. _Acceptable_ in a way that nothing had been for Stranger since waking up in the clinic.

 

That had been his first moment of feeling something other than the apathy that was only rarely marred by passing rages with no causes.

 

“Rest easy, there, boy! It’s just ol’ Vic! _You know_ ol Vic!” the doc’d exclaimed genially, not alarmed, but not making any sudden movements, either. Or any movements at all. His smile, though, was as warm and kindly as ever. Brimming with love and pride that belonged to and was meant for a dead boy and always would.

 

But for a few infinitely slow heartbeats, that had ceased to matter. With the Weatherby rifle aimed at Vic, Stranger’d had a moment of crystalline memory and _feeling_ : just before The Bullet—and the bright-quivering light and shattered-empty darkness that had stood between The Bullet and Stranger’s first coherent memory—was a chilly desert night. A flickering bonfire-glow. Two movie-extra goons and their preening, fancy-man boss. A checkered jacket and impersonal blue eyes . . . pale and amused, even as they’d been void of mercy and remorse.

 

 _“. . . eighteen-karat run of bad luck,”_ those eyes had said in a voice like old, viscous oil. Or maybe fresh, oozing slime. And: _“. . . the game was rigged from the start. . . .”_

 

 _Aren’t they all_ , Stranger had realized, putting the slightest of pressures on the trigger as those final words echoed throughout the levels of his formerly blank being. _Ol’ Vic Pepper’d_ disappeared, leaving in his stead that blue-eyed man in his natty-garish, checkered jacket. In his hand had been a big, blunderbuss revolver that would’ve once more spit fire and damnation, if Stranger had let it. If he hadn’t . . . if he _didn’t_. . . .

 

For a moment . . . Doc Mitchell’d almost had another headshot patient in his house. _For a moment_ , the empty vessel that was Stranger’s mind and body had been filled beyond capacity with coldly roaring desire—no . . . _ambition_.

 

In those breath-held moments . . . he’d remembered _everything_. He’d known who he’d been and how it’d all gone so horribly wrong . . . beginning with the death of the mother who’d loved him sadly, but unconditionally, and ended fifteen years later by the heartless expedience of a murdering fancy-man, under a brilliant night sky.

 

 _Benny_. _Ratfink motherfucker_ Benny, Stranger’d known—the _only_ thing he’d firmly recalled of that old life when the moment of clarity and purpose had passed. Had sunk and been submerged by whatever part of him had decided he could do without such moments and feelings. He still had that name, those blue eyes, and a natty-garish checkered jacket. And . . . that sorry/not sorry, oozing _voice_ telling him what he’d already known, but had stupidly, fatally overlooked in his own greed and hubris.

 

The game _had_ been rigged from the start. _All_ the games that _ever were_ had been rigged. No new information, there. But suddenly . . . _one_ rigged game had started to _matter_ , or could’ve, if he chose to let it. The one that _Benny-ratfink-motherfucker-dig?_ had rigged and then, consequently, had swatted the person Stranger had been like a doomed gnat.

 

Stranger had had his first moment of recall and curiosity about the man who’d gone into that shallow grave, and a sense of duty and purpose. The darkness that stood between him and his first life’s beginnings—and ending—was no longer a void. It had mass and heft. _Weight_. It was a darkness that concealed, rather than consumed.

 

Now that Stranger had held the Mark V—had realized a purpose for _it and himself_ , as shining and true as first love—his hands would probably never feel right holding anything else. Not until Stranger had some answers. And some blood. Neither was, he’d known from nowhere but with towering certainty, complete without the other.

 

But he’d had no way to begin. No place to start. No _inkling_ of how to express any of this, let alone how to address the issue of ratfink-motherfucker- _Benny_ probably still walking around and breathing. . . .

 

And so, blinking, deflating, and settling, Stranger had lowered the Mark V slowly, after automatically relocking the safety bolt. He’d passed it off to the doc with hands that’d no longer felt like his own . . . merely felt like they _had been_ feeling for all the months since he’d woke up in Goodsprings. Pointless and purposeless. _Numb_ , like the rest of him.

 

“That’s m’boy, Cam! I know sometimes things get turned around in that head of yours, but you’re _always_ my good boy. Now, lemme dust this old thing off so you can scare up Sunny for some target-practice, huh?”

 

Nearly a minute after he’d surrendered the Mark V, and the feelings of power and purpose, self and familiarity that came with it, Stranger had finally nodded once, barely. Once more, his inner landscape had become serene and dead. His pointless, useless arms sank to his sides like wiry planks. His wide-palmed, long-fingered hands were quiescent and mute.

 

Yet still, somehow, ready. _Awake_.

 

They knew, now, what purpose and skill were—had had a taste of both that was thrilling and addictive—and wouldn’t look askance at or pass up on a chance at _more_. Their time would come, once again, they’d known. And they would remain watchful and ready.

 

Then, Stranger’s eyes had, finally, ticked away from the doc, who was smiling up at him all paternal and loony, as he almost always seemed to, over to Vic’s pale, displeased face. Their gazes had locked, saying nothing, but with more honesty than either man had ever expressed to the other. Doc, meanwhile, had grabbed an oiled rag out of the small wooden crate he’d brought down from his attic along with the Mark V. Also in the crate, had been ammo and other accessories for a dedicated marksman.

 

“Belinda-May’d _kill me dead_ , if she knew how dusty I let her baby get. And she’d be _right_ to, wouldn’t she?” the doc had muttered to himself, running the rag along the otherwise well-cared-for rifle.

 

Vic had finally lowered his narrowed gaze, hints of a proto-sneer curving the right side of his mouth. Then he’d stomped out of the doc’s den without so much as a word or one of his put-upon sighs of weary forbearance. And when the doc had looked up at Stranger from his cleaning, his bushy brows had lifted in pleased surprise.

 

“What’s that smile for, Cam? Why, I ain’t seen you smile _once_ , since you came home, and now, you’re grinnin’ to beat the band!”

 

And Stranger hadn’t answered the old man. Mainly because he hadn’t had any answer with which to do so. And anyway, his face and skull had soon started to ache, and the smile had fled as suddenly as it’d come. The skull-ache had been followed by a two-day fugue from which he’d awoken in the clinic, restrained and bleary, with the doc sitting by his bedside, wan, slumped, and snoring away, in an uncomfortable-looking folding chair.

 

Now, three months later, as he let his feet hear this old, but unfamiliar trail and its tale, he decided that both might be far too long for him to listen to until the end, assuming there was one. It was already late afternoon and he hadn’t brought any water, food, or gear for overnight camping. And all of those were necessities even on the _fringes_ of the fringes of the desert.

 

His quiet, careful steps slowed and he made to turn back the way he’d come without hesitation, his jumbled, blank mind nonetheless running the trail like retracing a racial memory. One burned so deep into his chaotic subconscious, he could’ve followed it by instinct alone. But in the midst of turning, he heard a frightened yelp from nearby. Just over the next rise, and followed by frantic barking.

 

It was again instinct, not conscious thought that had him ready his Mark V and stalk east again, toward that sound of animal terror.

 

Less than a minute later, at a slight crest of land that then fell away into a cracked, semi-shallow dry-gully, he peered down at the scene below, assessing it in the first half of a second then addressing it in the second.

 

As the echo of the shot reverberated off the Earth and sky, then faded into silence, he straightened from his target-diminishing crouch and shouldered the rifle.

 

He, and the half-grown dog with its back to a corner of the gully, stared at the gobbets of cobra now decorating the dusty depression. Then, he and the dog stared at each other. Looked each other over, then met each other’s gazes warily.

 

 _Weird little rangy mutt. All fur and bones. Looks like an underfed mix of Doberman and coyote . . . how the_ fuck _?_ an incredulous, amused voice whispered across his immobile internal landscape, like a faint breeze. That voice was almost familiar . . . sounded like Stranger’s _own_ voice, only rich with emotion and laughter.

 

Or, how he could only _suppose_ his voice might sound if he were to ever experience those states at a noteworthy volume.

 

Before he could consider his actions, he’d hopped down into the dry-gully in a puff of dust, crunching a bit of dying scrub-weed as he landed with a chuffed grunt. The dog— _pup_ , he sensed, even though it was already long and tall—watched him with dark, intelligent, unblinking eyes. Its fur and tail were still standing up, but not as frantically as ten seconds ago.

 

Moving slowly, so as not to startle, he closed the distance between himself and the pup, rifle slung back over his shoulder. He didn’t anticipate being attacked by the rattled animal, but even if he was, he was fairly sure he could handle it with his bare hands, or quickly using the butt of the rifle as a club.

 

As he drew nearer, he expected the pup to growl a warning, but it didn’t. It merely whined, soft and tired and sad, lowering its head and letting its tail droop. Not in fear, but in misery.

 

Stranger didn’t know what the animal expected of him, what lived experience had informed it an armed and larger predator would do, should such a predator have it backed into a corner.

 

Whatever the pup expected, said predator was determined not to live down to that expectation. It was the first determination—first _imperative_ he’d experienced since the slowly solidifying determination to _open his eyes,_ days after the doc’d finished mucking around in his skull and treating the damage the permanently embedded Bullet had left in its wake.

 

“I don’t know comforting and reassuring things to say,” he told the anxious pup, stopping a mere few feet away and slowly holding out his left hand for sniffing. The pup glanced at the hand, but then right back at Stranger’s face as if trying to read his intentions. It licked its muzzle nervously and whined again. “Not even to a puppy. But I s’pose if I simply keep sayin’ any old things in a calm, pleasant manner, you won’t try to nip off my fingers or go for my throat.”

 

The pup stopped whining, tilted its head curiously, then barked once, soft and somehow agreeing.

 

His brows lifting in surprise, Stranger quickly dismissed his doubts that the dog somehow understood his intent, if not his exact words. He’d seen far stranger—and more vexing—things in his nine months of life, such as humans who understood neither word _nor_ intent, no matter how plainly telegraphed.

 

Plus, he, himself, had damn-near crawled out of his own grave, almost a year gone.

 

So, he thought it best to save his doubts and skepticism for things and situations that more warranted them.

 

Kneeling smoothly, Stranger continued to hold out his hand. It wasn’t another minute before the pup leaned forward a bit, hesitant and uncertain, and gave his fingers a delicate sniff.

 

“You’re okay, buddy,” Stranger promised quietly, holding perfectly still as the dog sniffed a bit more deeply and leaned a bit closer. “I may not like cobras, but dogs’re fine by me. I know a dog called Cheyenne. She’s smart, just like you.”

 

The pup’s nose, wet, but not wet enough— _cold_ , but not cold _enough,_ if Stranger was any judge—nudged his grubby, blunt-tipped fingers. Then a not-wet-enough-either tongue gave those fingers a light, raspy lick.

 

Stranger chuckled, unpracticed and halting, and the pup blinked at him and whuffed, just as haltingly.

 

“You’re a good boy,” he informed it with the same warmth and approval with which Doc Mitchell tended to lavish _him_. “ _Very_ good. Sunny and Cheyenne’d like you a lot.”

 

The pup made an interrogative noise and licked its muzzle again. Its tail was up, once more, but wagging happily, not stiff and still with fright.

 

“Don’t suppose you’d wanna follow me back to Goodsprings, huh, pup? It’s not too far and I can feed you once we get there,” Stranger offered. The pup blinked again and sniffed, as if considering the offer, then barked once, excited and eager.

 

“Yeah. You’re probably hungry and thirsty and tired. And lonely,” Stranger added after a brief pause. Then reached out some more, also slowly, and when the pup didn’t seem inclined to growl or avoid his touch, he let his big hand settle on its head. Then scratched between its ears with gentle and measured attention.

 

Soon, the pup’s dry tongue was lolling in apparent bliss, occasional whuffs and whimpers escaping it nonstop.

 

Finally, chuckling once more— _laughing_ , really—he gave it a final scratch, then ruffled the scruff at the top of its spine. That was good for a long, happy shiver.

 

“Alright, pup. Time to start back to town, if we wanna beat the dark.”

 

Another eager bark, then the dog was leaning in to lick his face exactly three times.

 

Bemused, and smiling for only the second time ever, Stranger snorted. “You may be a pup, but you’ve got full-grown-dog breath.”

 

“Whuff!”

 

“I’m glad you agree,” Stranger drawled, standing, then stretching until his spine popped. Finally, with a nod at the pup, he was making his way to the south embankment. It looked to be the easiest option for a clever dog to scramble up out of the gully, without having to be hoisted by a near-stranger.

 

#

 

Not being long on imagination, Stranger named the pup Dog Breath. And _everyone_ loved him.

 

Well, everyone except Vic Pepper. But then, Stranger found it doubtful Vic truly loved, or even liked _anyone_. He simply tolerated _some_ folks more than others. Manipulated and condescended to some folk _less_ than others.

 

And, to be fair, Dog Breath had disliked Vic _first_ —as many animals seemed to—growling at him with real animus when the man had tried to pet him the one and only time.

 

Other than Vic, however, Dog Breath _loved_ everyone. And everyone loved _him_ , and fed him and spoiled him. Even stoic, austere Sunny. Cheyenne tolerated Dog Breath, and his energy and antics, with the world-weary maturity of an older, more seasoned dog.

 

It was Chet who started calling Dog Breath “D.B.,” and by Thanksgiving, four months after his arrival at Goodsprings—and one year and one month after Stranger’s—everyone was calling the affable, excitable, quickly-growing dog some version of “Deebs.”

 

Though Chet, ever one to be at the vanguard, started calling him “Señor Deebles,” for some reason. And often enough that Deebs happily answered to that, as well as myriad combinations of his various names—of which he had at least as many as there were townsfolk in Goodsprings.

 

It soon became obvious that Deebs would answer to damned near _anything_ he was called, as long as Vic Pepper wasn’t the one doing the calling.

 

But even though Deebs was sort of the entire town’s dog, his clear favorite was and remained Stranger. He slept in Stranger’s bedroom—which was, really, _Cameron Mitchell’s_ old bedroom, perfectly preserved—and shared Stranger’s food. He followed Stranger around like an actual love-sick puppy, on his trails and tales of increasing time and territory . . . and deeper and deeper into the fringes of the Mojave Desert.

 

#

 

Four days along the faintest, but oldest and longest trail-tale yet, and Stranger hadn’t seen a human face or habitation since a few hours northeast of Goodsprings.

 

It was nice. Quiet. Simple.

 

He strode along, beside the trail, neither hurried nor ambling, his bedroll and laden pack tight to his back, the rifle slung forward over his right shoulder, bouncing a bit against his torso. At his right side, happy and curious—occasionally chasing geckos or other lizards—Deebs trotted along in companionable silence, with only the occasional exclamatory _whuff_ to leaven it.

 

This was the longest time and farthest distance Stranger had ever wandered from Goodsprings in his fifteen months tenure. Doc Mitchell didn’t much like his wanderlust, looking more and more worried every time Stranger stepped out the door with his pack. Then more and more _relieved_ when Stranger returned, no worse for wear but for some dirt, sweat, and a few scrapes.

 

But despite Stranger’s reluctance to cause the old man anxiety or worry— or _stress,_ which was likely not good for a man of his years—his body and his mind . . . his inner-landscape _needed_ the peace and solitude of the desert. The solace of seemingly unending, unchanging vistas and nothing but himself and Deebs to mar that _outer_ -landscape.

 

“It’s like you’re _searchin’_ for somethin’, boy . . . but I can’t for the life of me imagine _what_ , on the fringes of the damned Mojave!” the doc had said just before this most recent desert-trek. As he’d said _every time_ Stranger strapped on his full, weighty pack. His kindly eyes had been, of course, worried and sad. “What’re you _lookin for_ , out there?”

 

Stranger, as ever, had blinked and shrugged. Then turned toward the dim, narrow front hall.

 

If he’d had the knack of self-reflection and self-expression, he’d have said: _Peace, Doc. Just peace. Desert’s the only place I seem to find it. But even when I do, it ain’t self-replenishing_ or _long-lasting. Nor easy to come by. I always have to go searching for more, and farther and farther afield. . . ._

 

“Be careful, Cameron. The desert ain’t no kinda place for a man to be alone, and find himself in need or want. To find himself _weak_ . . . even temporarily. It’s the kinda place that becomes a man’s _grave_ if he wavers or falters in the wrong moment,” the doc had said as he’d followed Stranger out of the living room and to the front door. Late afternoon sunlight had poured in through the panes of glass set high in the door, like liquid gold. As ever it had.

 

But the doc’s _words . . . those_ had been something new, and had given Stranger pause.

 

“I won’t be alone,” he’d said, frowning back at the concerned doctor, with one large, restless hand on the scuffed, brass doorknob. “I’ll have Deebsy.”

 

At this, Deebs—waiting patiently at Stranger’s heels, tongue lolling in his joy—had barked, as if confirming that statement, looking adoringly between Stranger and the doc.

 

The doctor had smiled a bit, though it had been more of a grimace and tears had sparkled in his eyes, as they so often did. “Well, Deebsy’s a good boy. The _goodest_ boy, Cam. But he ain’t a _cat_. Ain’t got eight more lives to fall back on. Neither do _you_. You barely got this _second_ one! So, don’t you throw it away!”

 

Stranger had frowned, then nodded. “I’ll be careful, Pa,” he’d said, quiet and mumbling as ever. Normally, that mumbled _Pa_ , would’ve calmed the old man down, even though it’d always made Stranger shiver, and his head and chest ache like bottled-up screams. But this time, the doc’d looked even more upset, the shine in his dark eyes spilling down his wrinkled-tanned cheeks.

 

“Ya got the satellite, right?” he’d asked anxiously. Stranger had nodded again, patient and tranquil once once more, through sheer force of will.

 

“In with my spare shirt an’ trou, so it don’t get damaged. Turned off, so the battery don’t run down. Also got the back-up batteries with me, too. Fully charged.”

 

“Good boy, then. Good boy. Just . . . don’t forget to _use_ that fancy-damned-phone if you need to, then,” the doc had said, shaky-gruff. He’d then placed his hands on Stranger’s broad, underpadded shoulders, squeezing tight, as if trying to impart some esoteric wisdom through touch alone. “Nothin’ but skin and bones and stubbornness! Hell, an’ all this wanderin’ ain’t puttin’ meat on your bones, neither!”

 

To which Deebs had barked another seeming agreement.

 

“I’ll be back within ten days. Fortnight, at most. If I’m delayed beyond that, I’ll call.”

 

“Alright then, I s’pose. Okay. Safe travels, m’boy.”

 

After another slight nod, Stranger had gone, with Deebs on his heels. He’d felt Doc Mitchell’s hope and fear and concern on his back until the house was out of direct sight.

 

And aside from a shouted _“take care, boys!”_ from Sunny and a corresponding bark from Cheyenne as he passed the cemetery where life had ended and begun for him, Stranger hadn’t heard another human voice, or any sort of commentary that wasn’t one of Deebs’ many expressive whuffs and barks.

 

Now, as he climbed a gradual rise, the last of the setting sun at his back, Deebs stopped suddenly, just ahead of Stranger, sniffing the air. The ground. Then the air again. Then he growled, low and warning, turning those intelligent dark eyes up to Stranger’s face, as if awaiting further instruction.

 

Removing his pack slowly and quietly, Stranger placed it gently on the gravelly incline, against a half-buried rock, so it wouldn’t tumble down the modest hill and give him away with the noise. Then, clutching his Mark V, he crept up the hill on hands and knees, with Deebs low to the ground right next to him.

 

Near the apex of the rise, he flattened to his belly and slithered the last little bit up like a salamander. With a final glance at his alert companion, Stranger slowly peered over the rise. . . .

 

. . . only to lose his inhalation in the middle of taking it, to a long string of dumbfounded cussing.

 

After he ran out of cusses, and after another minute of scoping out the mostly bare, otherwise unpeopled landscape below, Stranger got to his knees. Then to his feet. And, after _another minute_ of staring and staring, Deebs patient and watchful at his side, he turned to retrieve his pack, then ascended once more to what was the highest vantage point for some miles.

 

“Yeah. Guess he _ain’t_ gettin’ any closer, us standin’ here an’ gawpin’,” Stranger grunted, in agreement with Deebs’ questioning whuff. “Onward, Señor. Lead the way.”

 

With another whuff, Deebs started nimbly, quickly down the other side of the hill, toward a flat stretch of cracked, shadeless hardpan, in the middle of which was a huge iron cross. Made of girders, perhaps, like for a building or a bridge, it was half a hundred yards away or so, and planted deeper than a redwood, it seemed. Secured upon it—lashed to it, with arms stretched wide and legs crossed tight—naked and limp, was the body of a man.

 

With another absent-minded cuss and some puzzled head-shaking, Stranger hitched up his pack, readied his rifle, and followed Deebs on down.

 

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MASSIVE thanks to [Ghostofshe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8285711/chapters/18981743) for the beta-extraordinaire and AMAZING suggestions for realistically canon touches and general suckage-cessation. Dude . . . you gave my Courier **purpose**. Gave his story a reason beyond his aimless, unaware rambling through his second life. ALL the good in this chapter--and prolly the rest of this fic--is a result of your beta and your suggestions. Except for Deebs. Deebs was all me. ALL me. . . .  
>  ::shifty eyes::  
> ::genuflects to Ghostofshe::


	3. Deebs, the Samaritan, and the Crucified Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stranger and Deebs investigate the man on the cross.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Attempted murder (by crucifixion). Allusions to past sadomasochistic relationship that was also abusive. Mental illness brought about by a physical condition. Mental . . . untidiness/disjointedness. Dissociative disorder, including: fugue-states, amnesia, and detachment. Liberties taken with the locations of certain towns, throughout. Especially Goodsprings.
> 
> Also note: The five **Latin phrases** are translated in end notes, and labeled as such, for easy, **Control/Command + F** findin'.

Didn’t take but a little for Stranger and Deebs to get within spitting distance of the naked and crucified man.

 

Silence held court the entire way, once they stumped and padded to the bottom of the hill—both wary and puzzled, but unafraid—and they kept their eyes on their respective prizes: Stranger on the crucified man, Deebs, as ever, on everything else, besides. Though, this bit of desert was flatter than month-old roadkill for miles around, but for the lone hill they’d just left behind and some shallow gullies dotting the hardpan landscape ahead.

 

As they drew closer—Stranger with the Mark V ready and the bolt decidedly unlocked—Stranger armed sweat off his neck and forehead. He left dusty-wet, pale-tan smears all along the burnished-brass skin of his rangy forearm, and the slightly darker skin of face and neck. Even if he’d noticed or known, he wouldn’t have cared. Wouldn’t have been the first time and likely not the last, the unforeseen aside. Stranger only had eyes for the sturdy, steady girder-cross and the man suffering ‘pon it.

 

Or . . . _suffered_.

 

He was trouble, Stranger sensed, but firmly in their road. Even the ancient trail Stranger and Deebs had been following lead almost right to the cross, it seemed, passing within mere feet of it and its bearer before meandering off west and north.

 

It wasn’t until he _was_ feet away that even Stranger’s keen eyes could pick up the tired, shallow lift of the man’s bare ribcage. He’d only even heard the soft, involuntary wheeze of the man’s ragged breathing over the scouring wind from a little _less_ than half-again that distance.

 

Even though the day was, indeed, drawing near to evening, it was still the _Mojave_ , and still hotter than a dragon’s temper. For at least as long as the sun hung in the sky like a bloated, nightmarish blood-orange. Even Stranger’s academic and passing interest in his body’s reactions to heat or cold were shuffled to the forefront of his mind’s simple considerations in the _Mojave_. He felt the heat, dry and blast furnace-heavy, sucking moisture from him every second. Felt himself being rendered down to the essentials and made lighter, freer, and tougher.

 

The desert _took_ , sure as anything. But it also gave in ways that were as necessary as the water Stranger lost exploring it.

 

When he was standing cautiously, but curiously, as close as he meant to get without a longer look, Stranger blinked up at the cross and its occupant.

 

The part of the cross that was above-ground was about eleven feet high, at Stranger’s reckoning, and made of some sort of penny-a-ton pig iron. Dusty, but not rusty, and a uniform middling-gray. It appeared to have been planted pretty deep, and the t-bar was a good nine feet above the planted base, which was deep enough, for sure, that the man riding it wouldn’t be able to rock it over.

 

Said man was dwarfed by his cross, but still probably slightly shorter than average height. He was eye-drawingly proportionate and capable-looking, all conditioned muscles and smooth, if dirty skin. His head was hanging damned near to his ribs as he wheezed out breaths immediately after gasping them in. His hair was a bronzy, medium brown, markedly lightly than Stranger’s desert-seasoned skin. It had the suggestion of a wave, even though it was utilitarian-short in a way that made Stranger think: _military_.

 

The cross-man was pale—like blanched olives—under an unevenly distributed tan, and the tell-tale redness of the beginnings of a sunburn. He was still sweating about the chest and shoulders, though not much. Had he been bone-dry, Stranger might’ve put a bullet of mercy in him. But he _was_ still sweating. Still had enough life to make _sweat_. That was, for his sake, a good thing. If he’d still been dripping, though, that would’ve been optimal.

 

 _But when is anything in this life ever optimal?_ Stranger asked himself, blinking up at the man and sighing softly. Deebs was pacing around the cross and sniffing. He whuffed when he was done— _this_ whuff was Deebs’ version of an indifferent shrug—didn’t piss on it, and came back to Stranger to have a sit at his feet. His tongue was lolling and he simply looked up at Stranger as if to say: _Welp!_ My _part’s done, human. Have at_.

 

Stranger rolled his eyes. High alert was, it seemed, over.

 

 _Well-enough, then_.

 

Stranger removed his pack carefully, silently, without putting down the Mark V, and placed it on the ground. Throughout, he studied the cross-man in more detail, his eyes lingering at his strong, gracefully tapering, nearly hairless chest; the particular arch of his narrow feet; the laxity of his rough-elegant, somehow precise hands, bound as they were by thick rope that wound along muscular arms, all the way past proud shoulders. Damned near to the man’s collar bone. His waist was also bound to the cross, as were his slim, but sturdy ankles.

 

Whoever had planted the cross-man had wanted him to linger. To _suffer_. With no relief of dislocated anything to allow him to sag and drop and _die faster_.

 

This wasn’t just an example, this . . . this was _personal_. The kind of punishment that’d been planned and savored, and had no doubt hurt the punished worse than just outright gutting.

 

Or head-shooting.

 

Stranger frowned, one minutely tremoring hand going to the pale, faintly puckered skin above his left eyebrow. For a few moments, he could feel the _lightburningagony_ that’d been his death and afterlife. Could feel _The Bullet_ vibrating restively in his skull-meat, waiting for a good punch or concussion to jar it out of its sweet-spot so it could carry on with its job of putting him in a grave he wouldn’t _never_ find his way out of.

 

Stranger moaned softly, garnering a worried look from Deebs and a commiserative whine. Then, after a warning throb and sharp pain at their backs, Stranger’s eyes ticked to the cross-man’s thighs . . . where his gaze loitered and dallied, caressing the long, somehow elegant muscles there until past and pain were irrelevant. Forgotten. Nonexistent. He didn’t realize for quite how long he’d been lollygagging until the cross-man gasped in a slightly deeper breath, then coughed out a sound that was keening and heart-broken. Then followed it with actual words, though Stranger couldn’t understand them.

 

“* _Dominus_ ,” he chuffed, parched and rough, wheezing harder than ever as he tried to lift his head and only barely succeeded. Stranger could make out the deep pink of his sunburnt brow and the beginnings of a high-bridged nose. Then, the cross-man’s head drooped again as he laughed, weak and hysterical and brief. He keened again and shuddered all over. **“ _Ignosce me . . . quaeso, ne me respice . . . dominus_. . . .”

 

His broken, rasping tenor was as intriguing and affecting as the rest of him. As those artist’s hands and sculpted thighs. Drawing another, deep-er breath, the cross-man shuddered once more and twitched all over.

 

 _Literally_ all over.

 

***“ _Memento quaeso quomodo ambulaverim tibi. . . nocere tibi enim ac sanguine, domine mi. Interfectus est_.” As Stranger watched with confusion and mild alarm, the cross-man was starting to get hard, and attempting to lift his head, once again. His hips moved only slightly, due to the restraint of his waist, but the motion was sinuous and unmistakable. The nascent hard-on, in conjunction with those inviting hips and those firm, gorgeous thighs, made it even more difficult for Stranger to think than usual. And yet, for once, the maelstrom within him was somewhat calmed. Amused. _Intrigued_. It was being overtaken by a different sort of furor, altogether, and Stranger was breathing hard in a way that had nothing to do with the unforgiving desert air. “ _Par est autem ut ego moriar pro te. . . ._ ”

 

The cross-man chuffed out another rasping-parched laugh as he finally managed to lift his head. Stranger felt the suddenness of the other’s raving, but focused regard like ice-fire lightning through every atom of him. Along every nerve, to its end, and through every vein, like a drug. And when he met that gaze because of an instinct and need as involuntary and powerful as his next breath in, he actually _did_ drop the Mark V. Thankfully, the well-made rifle didn’t fire. Deebs, however, barked once, reprovingly, as if to say: _Really, dude?_

 

****“ _Quomodo autem dolet_ dilexit _me, et in opera tua delectation, mea dominus_ ,” the cross-man said, throaty and alluring, despite his state, his pale irises almost as white as snow-drops in the sea of red surrounding them. Stranger supposed those irises were merely a very light blue or gray, in less harsh environs and circumstances. But they commanded and kept him, nonetheless. “ _Quid amas,_ ut mihi dolet _._ Placere. . . .”

 

And their gazes held for what felt like eternity, during which Stranger was only dimly aware of himself beyond the throb and stare of his eyes. He dimly felt sweat gathered at the small of his back, making another of his branded t-shirts cling unpleasantly. He also felt perspiration running down his face and dampening his scalp on its way down his messy, mid-back ponytail. He felt the nervous readiness of his empty, dusty hands and the way they clenched, restless and futile without the Mark V to hold and control. To ground them.

 

He felt his dick starting to get _hard_ with speed and determination that were as surprising as they were involuntary. And discomfiting.

 

(Not for the first time, this arousal, but certainly the most intense time. It did _not_ feel as if it’d eventually just go away if he ignored it, like all the other times.)

 

He felt . . . a little faint. . . .

 

Deebs barked again, loud and sharp—not a _danger!_ bark, but a _hey! Stop scaring me!_ sort of bark. Stranger returned to himself, such as he was, gasping and drenched in sweat. The vista around him seemed to slowly pitch and yaw, like a ship at sea, and he hung his head with a pleading, frightened groan.

 

The sight of the erection tenting out his damned jeans, undeterred and uninterested in playing dead, made him close his eyes with a tired grunt. His brain and his eyeballs were throbbing. His dick and balls were throbbing, too, which was somehow worse than the headache that was quickly careening toward a probable skull-ache and fugue. . . .

 

 _Can’t do this now_ , he told himself with anxious desperation, but a firmness that felt almost as if he was holding the Mark V. That maelstrom-part of himself that _knew_ , knew everything and _remembered_ everything, and was _always_ raging—always looking for a way into the world, and somewhere and someone on whom to lay down the hammer-fall of its judgment, anger, despair, and loss . . . its sense of betrayal, its _grief_ —was on the cusp of going absolutely apeshit-ballistic. And taking Stranger’s psyche with it.

 

If that happened, Stranger knew, they’d _all_ die in the damn desert: him, his maelstrom-self, Deebsy, and the cross-man. And the doc’d _never_ know what’d happened to them. Would simply have to weather the loss of another stupid, headstrong, selfish son. . . .

 

 _Listen. You’re angry and hurt and scared and sad. We_ all _are. I understand you. Of all people,_ I understand you. _And I’m sorry,_ Stranger spoke into the maelstrom that was his old self, as it swirled and rose and raged around the small, calm eye that was Stranger, himself. The cyclonic furor didn’t die down, but Stranger could tell that something in that stormy calamity was . . . listening. For the moment, anyway. So, he tried to say his piece plain and good. _I’m_ so _sorry that you died and can’t rest even now. But_ I _ain’t ready to die now. Neither is Deebsy. Neither is cross-man. We got_ living _to do, yet. And if you mess that up,_ you’re _as bad as_ ratfink-motherfucker-Benny _. Only you ain’t even got a_ real _reason to fuck over people who ain’t done you wrong. No excuses, like vengeance or profit. You’re just being a self-centered, immature horse’s ass_ because you can _and because you think you’re entitled to be. Well, news-brief: you’re not. Not when you’re gonna take me and Deebsy and the cross-man with you into another grave. You can fugue me once we’re back in town, but for now, I need to_ think _, and clearly, or this’ll be the_ last _fugue you ever give me._

 

Stranger felt no change in the maelstrom for long minutes, other than surprise and a haughty sort of defensiveness. Then. . . .

 

. . . the ache behind his eyes and around The Bullet began to ease, rather than encompass his entire skull. His breathing slowed, and the tightness and heat in his chest released, and cooled.

 

When he opened his eyes at last and blinked his vision clear, he was staring down at his utter lack of an erection and the blunt, rounded toes of his broken-in boots.

 

Relieved, he shifted his gaze to Deebsy, who was watching him with patient curiosity. Stranger found a smile for his best friend, as always, even though it was a grimacing one. Then he lowered his fingertips from his sweaty temples and looked up and around, blinking in the harsh, lurid, throbbing light of sunset’s last gasps.

 

He’d been inside, in with the maelstrom, for well over an hour. Possibly two.

 

That was . . . worrying. If it’d been a fugue, it was unlike any other he’d ever experienced. He’d been conscious through it, not blacked-out. And he’d been aware of time passing, just not able to correctly measure it.

 

He remembered every moment of the near-fugue with unusual clarity.

 

Frowning, now, he looked up at the cross-man. He was sagging again, unconscious or barely conscious, his head hanging. He, too, was no longer hard, and after that bit of Stranger’s curiosity was assuaged, he made a point of not looking at the cross-man’s dick or thighs again, quelling the groin-tingles that ensued after even so brief a glance.

 

Of more moment was the fact that the cross-man was scarcely sweating, now. And, when Stranger finally moved close enough to touch him, he wasn’t radiating much heat at all, despite the lingering warmth of the day.

 

Letting his hand slide down the cross-man’s shapely left calf, to the ropes binding his ankles, Stranger looked up into the red-pale face not too far above his own. Those light eyes were closed and the wheeze of the cross-man’s breathing was nearly inaudible. As if _real_ wheezing took juice he just didn’t have, anymore.

 

“I don’t know comforting or reassuring things to say.” Stranger was startled to hear his own voice emerge, rusty and choked, from his lips. He felt almost as if he was hovering five feet above his own self. “Not even to a dead cross-man. _Near_ -dead. But I s’pose,” his voice mused, even as Stranger stopped stroking the cross-man’s calf and started testing the knots in the ropes below them. They were level with Stranger’s pelvis and they weren’t expert. But they were tight. Quadrupled, and watered after tying, so that the desert sun had dried the brittle, hempen rope into an unsolvable mass. Which was fine. Stranger had plenty and varied sharp things in his pack. “I s’pose if I simply keep sayin’ any old things in a calm, pleasant manner, you won’t try to kick me in the balls or face. Or struggle so hard I drop ya.”

 

The cross-man’s reply was a half-conscious moan and another twitch.

 

Nodding, Stranger patted the bound ankles gently, then went to where Deebs was guarding his pack and bedroll, to retrieve his utility blades.

 

#

 

De-crucifying the cross-man wasn’t, all told, terribly difficult or time-consuming.

 

Whoever’d planted him hadn’t made contingencies for anyone finding or attempting to free him. Else, they’d have used chains and padlocks, instead of simple rope. They’d thought the only monkey wrench to their plans would come from the cross-man somehow freeing himself and somehow surviving that fall.

 

Stranger wondered what it said about the cross-man that his enemies accorded him such determination, skill, and cleverness, as to somehow get free of his own crucifixion. Even brief consideration of such strength and tenacity made Stranger feel respect toward the man that bordered on admiration. As well as an intensification of his unusual curiosity in something that wasn’t the desert or a dog.

 

Then, reining his wandering mind in from supposition and falderol, he went to work on the ankle-ropes, first, entirely ignoring the knots.

 

After nearly five careful minutes he was done, and dropping the severed, knotted rope. The shapely, distracting legs fell open a bit, before Stranger could catch them and still them, and the cross-man groaned, soft and pained. Twitched again, and mumbled to himself. Stranger grasped the man’s heels gently, moving his feet back and forth slightly, side to side slightly, with slowly widening motions to ease feeling and dexterity back into those legs. The ankles themselves were red and purple with rope-burn and contusions. The skin was mottled and peeling.

 

A glance back toward Deebs showed that the mutt was dozing. Stranger snorted and looked back up at the cross-man.

 

Next was the arms. Quite a bit more work than the ankles, because of the height and bad leverage, but Stranger doubted they’d prove an insurmountable problem.

 

Placing his hands on the cross-man’s trim waist, just above the ropes, Stranger squeezed gently.

 

“You’re gonna be okay, buddy. Just fine. But I gotta get your arms free first, so you don’t go crashin’ to the ground and break your . . . everything. _Comprende_? Gotta free your arms and it’s gonna _hurt_ , and unlike your legs, I can’t do much to help that till you’re on the ground. But once they’re done, that’s gonna be the worst of it. I promise.”

 

The cross-man’s clear, dusty brow furrowed just a little, as if he’d heard even in his sleep or delirium.

 

Well-enough, then.

 

Stranger took a few moments to free his plaid over-shirt from where it was tied to one of the straps of his pack. He always brought it against the chilly desert nights, but now, it’d also serve to protect his arms from the heated metal of the cross, and any rough edges.

 

It took a bunch of tries, first of just cold-jumping, then with running starts that woke Deebs and made him grumble. But before the last of the sun dipped below the horizon, like a huge, nuclear eye more than half-closed, Stranger was hanging from the hot-to-the-touch left arm of the cross, pulling himself up to a more stable grasp in a painstaking chin-up. Then legs-up.

 

When he was clinging to the vertical girder, with both legs and his left arm secure around the seven-foot-long cross-arm—and the cross-man’s own arm—he removed his slimmest serrated blade from his belt. There were three others tucked away, too. Ones he’d thought he might need, instead-of or as-well-as. Thankfully, he’d likely only require the slim blade to free the cross-man’s arms. He would worry about cutting off the knotted portions of rope at both wrists once the man was safely on the ground.

 

Working as swiftly and cautiously as he could, Stranger sawed through the thick rope, noting, but paying no other heed to the trembling and exhaustion quickly growing in his own limbs, as he did.

 

When the rope was, at last, severed, Stranger wanted to spend a minute or two working the cross-man’s arm and gentling it to spare him further pain and trauma. But he recognized that he hadn’t the strength or stamina to dawdle if he meant to make his way to the other arm and free it, too.

 

With a wince and a muttered: “Sorry, guy,” Stranger let his legs hang, grasped the cross-arm with both hands . . . and let the cross-man’s limp, sun-and-metal-burnt arm go, trailing rope from the wrist.

 

Deebs howled and even Stranger winced at the weak, eerie scream this tore from the cross-man’s hoarse, dry throat.

 

Steeling himself against the helpless, heart-rending sobs that followed, pathetic, unapprehending, and lacking in cogence as any newborn’s, Stranger swung his way quickly, hand over hand, to the intersection of the two girders and the distressed cross-man’s head. Then, as he passed the crux of the cross, slow and careful—despite the painful heat searing his palms—so as not to fall or to jostle the cross-man further, he muttered: “I’m sorry, buddy. So sorry. Gotta hurt ya to help ya, though. Ain’t no way ‘round that. Just keep hangin’ on.”

 

The cross-man either took no comfort from that or simply was in no state to appreciate the hollow sentiment couching such a grim truth. Whichever, Stranger didn’t so much as pause to offer compassion he didn’t know how to give, anyway. He just kept his eyes on the prize and, with sweat running off him and into his eyes, he finally reached the cross-man’s other wrist.

 

This time, when the cross-man’s arm dropped, trailing the thick rope at his wrist, there was no scream, simply a bereft wail of: “ _Domineeeeeh_. . . !”

 

Stranger’s dusty boots hit the ground before the wail faded, let alone the echo. All of him was shaking and shaken.

 

After a few moments to reorient himself and wipe his eyes and brow, Stranger was placing his aching-throbbing-sensitive palms on the nearly doubled-over cross-man’s waist again. Simply rested his hands on cool, soothing skin, while staring up into wide, uncomprehending eyes that were pale even in the rapidly falling dusk.

 

“Almost over. Ya done _real_ good for me, okay? _So_ good. And soon, you’re gonna be loungin’ in the comfiest bedroll east of Vegas. Sippin’ water and nibblin’ protein bars. And dressed, too, ‘cause . . . it’s, uh, gonna get cold real fast, now the sun’s gone down.” Stranger frowned as his face went redder than his palms for no reason at all. He had to tell himself to not look _anywhere_ but the cross-man’s miserable-bewildered eyes. He even made his mouth curve in the grimace-smile he always found for Deebs. “You’re gonna be okay.”

 

The cross-man licked his dry, cracked lips and winced. His pupils were pinpricks and tears ran freely from his compelling eyes.

 

*****“ _Quis es_? Who. . . ?” he coughed out, blinking and squinting as Stranger made quickish work of the thrice-wrapped rope at his waist. As he approached the last few slices needed to sever the rope, Stranger paused and stood there, knife in hand and forgotten as he met those eyes again briefly. His hand settled on the cross-man’s waist, once more, and they both shivered. The cross-man’s skin was dry and cool and soft, his flesh firm and swift-still . . . like a deep river flowing under Stranger’s appreciative hand.

 

Then his stare dropped from those intense eyes, to his dark right hand on the cross-man’s mostly unburnt side. The flow and beat of him—the thrumming, persistent, _vibrant_ tenacity of him—was strong yet somehow restful. Right. Lulling and difficult to not happily lose himself in completely . . . like the Mojave. Forever and ever, Amen.

 

It was only when the cross-man repeated himself, weaker, but more cogent and commanding, that Stranger recollected himself. Met those eyes again with an answer on his lips.

 

“I’m, ah, Cameron Mitchell, I guess. Most everybody just calls me _Stranger_ , though. So, you can, too.” Shivering at the cool appraisal of those eyes, Stranger blushed again and shrugged, letting his hand drift over the barely-holding rope, to the cross-man’s smooth, solid flank. Then back to the rope, which he forced himself to focus on cutting _without_ carving a chunk out of the cross-man’s side.

 

In less than a minute, the cross-man was, with a pained gasp, falling. Was _caught_ by Stranger, who’d dropped his knife instantly to do so. He hefted the cross-man easily right into a bridal-carry. He was solid and dense, but not unexpectedly so. Cool, still, but for the backs of him, where he’d been lashed to the cross. He smelled of sweat and sage, metal and wool. Stranger couldn’t help the way he inhaled, deep and slow, or the soft, needy sound that emerged from his ticking throat.

 

When he opened eyes he hadn’t told to close, the cross-man’s pale stare, gone markedly dazed, met Stranger’s, clearly trying to focus and hold that point of contact. To impart something both urgent and vital.

 

Stranger’s mouth curved in a smirk that felt old and new, and the maelstrom in him winnowed down to a narrow, powerful, slightly alien focus.

 

And that focus _spoke_ through him. _From him_.

 

“ _Or_ you c’n call me _God_ , if ya like, kitten . . . seein’ as how I’m your own personal Jesus Christ. Hell-fire, I’ll _gladly_ give ya a few _other_ reasons to call me _God_ , if you’re into it. An’ I just _bet_ you are, too.”

 

Once more hovering above his psyche, Stranger could only marvel with slow-dawning horror as he felt himself wink at the cross-man, who looked confused again—and disbelieving—before swooning silently, and just a touch dramatically. His whole body became a dead weight, just like his already limp, hot-cold arms.

 

Stranger grunted, and sighed in relief as he was once more deposited firmly within himself. The maelstrom settled and withdrew, amused and smug and watchful. But mostly smug.

 

“Horse’s ass,” Stranger grumbled at it as he carried the unconscious cross-man toward pack, bedroll, and best friend. The latter of the three watched his approach with interest that bordered on enthusiasm. Stranger knelt, settling the cross-man’s body across his denim-clad lap, and Deebs let out a contented, optimistic whuff.

 

“Sure. Easy for _you_ to say, Señor.” Stranger shook his faintly aching head.

 

Then, for more than a few moments—in the last light of the faintly-glowing, burnt-orange western horizon—Stranger stared down at the cross-man’s face. It was fine-featured and Patrician, despite the dirt and sunburn. Wide-set eyes, slightly slanted up at the outer corners, with pretty-thick eyelashes. An unlined brow and high cheekbones, like someone from a magazine added to the natural regality of his face, as did that high-bridged, pointy nose. His mouth wasn’t generous in width, but what there was of it was curving and probably wicked when smiling. His lips were even prettier than his eyelashes, pale but plush, despite their cracked and dry state. His jaw and chin were strong, sharp, and prominent in a way that denoted stubbornness in probably pathological amounts.

 

For all that, if Stranger had to guess, the cross-man was only _barely_ a man. Cross- _boy_ might have been a more fitting moniker, as the cross-man looked to be still in his teens somewhere. Maybe legal, maybe not. Not that it mattered either way to Stranger.

 

No reason it _should_ , either.

 

But whatever else the cross-man was, he was uniquely symmetrical and harmonious in part and whole. Gaze-able in a way Doc Mitchell would probably say was _prideful_ or _haughty,_ though without real animus. The cross-man wasn’t _classically handsome_ , like right out of Cam Mitchell’s old, falling-apart art books with their color photos of virgins and gods and cherubs. (Stranger had flipped carefully through those books often. Even though reading sometimes made his eyes throb and his brain ache, pictures were easy enough to handle.)

 

No, the cross-man didn’t have the look of a virgin or a god. And certainly not of a cherub. His features were, indeed, strikingly proud . . . and almost cruel, only just saved by the abject pathos even in his resting expression and the lingering softness of his youth. His face leaned toward stark and angular, but possessed a saturnine, sensual cast that suggested the possibility of imminent austerity . . . or wanton hedonism.

 

His was the intense, dedicated, _merciless_ beauty of an unflinching archangel or an unrepentant fiend.

 

Or . . . somehow . . . _both_. All that was missing was a flaming sword.

 

 _Luuuuucifer_ , the maelstrom supplied with mocking condescension and a singsong drawl. It was all flicker and amusement, and lightning on a stormy, receding _inner_ -horizon. _The Light-Bringer. Mornin’-Star and Son of the Dawn. Most-Beautiful_ and _Most-Beloved._ First _. That Cunnin’ Serpent and the Deceiver of Man . . ._ Ol’ Scratch. _You might wanna have a care, there, Samaritan. Bitin’ the hand that feeds is prolly in this one’s nature. Even when he_ don’t _mean it to be._

 

Frowning again, Stranger shook his head. As ever, the maelstrom was confusing and spiteful. Unhelpful. He’d learned to expect no less. And certainly not to expect any sort of plain-speaking, or explanation of the things it occasionally said.

 

 _You’re such a horse’s ass . . . a snide,_ bitchy _little one, too_ , he told it with glowering disapproval. The maelstrom, already distant beyond the merest heat of Stranger’s annoyance, laughed and raged like thunder that was heading out to torment the sea.

 

 _And_ you’re _a brain-damaged space-case who freaks the fuck out when he pops a stiffy over a pretty face. Quack-fucking-quack. Any_ other _boring, obvious shit you feel like belaborin’ before I call it a night?_

 

With that rejoinder and Stranger’s ensuing pugnacious silence, the maelstrom began moving back to the forefront of Stranger’s psyche, lowering and Apocalyptic . . . bearing the heat and misery and darkness of the fugue Stranger had so recently put off.

 

 _Now, or later_ , Mr. Cameron Mitchell, the maelstrom hissed and crackled. It was the apotheosis of all static electricity and breathless, claustrophobic ozone: local and controlled, but with the threat of exponential damage radiating from it like heat-energy. _If you’re feelin’ froggy, then c’mon an’_ leap _._ This _horse’s ass c'n dance all-fuckin’-night, an’ then some. We c’n go right-the-fuck-_ now, _my friend._

 

Quaking with something too blunt and hot to be fear, Stranger backed down ungraciously, but unambiguously. _For now_ , he promised the maelstrom, sullen and seething as its ferocity and cacophony seemed to tuck in on itself again. Hopefully in preparation to drift back out to . . . wherever it hung its hat when it wasn’t troubling daylight.

 

_Uh-huh. ‘S what I thought. You know how to find me, when you’re ready, string bean._

 

This time, the laughing-raging maelstrom didn’t recede, but disappeared like a thunder-clap, under or beyond the placid-numb surface of Stranger’s psyche, to a place he didn’t yet dare to follow it.

 

When he opened his eyes again, it was full twilight. The temperature change was marked, with the sun completely down and the stars all out. The cross-man was shivering and whimpering in Stranger’s arms and lap, and Deebs was watching them patiently, tongue still lolling.

 

“Reckon we’ll camp here, for the night, then move on, in the mornin’,” Stranger informed the cross-man and Deebs without a drop of inflection or emotion. Then he stifled another sigh and went to work freeing his bedroll with one hand, while holding the cross-man in place against him with the other. “If you’re feelin’ up to travelin’, that is. We’ll start on back to Goodsprings just as soon as you’re up to it, Cross-Man. Okay?”

 

The cross-man didn’t so much as twitch or sigh. But Deebs, ever agreeable, whuffed instant assent.

 

“Alright, then.”

 

By the time Stranger had the unconscious cross-man settled in his bedroll and wrapped up snug in his scratchy spare blanket, Deebs was fast asleep, too, and snoring.

 

TBC

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Latin phrases:**  
>  *“Master.”  
> **“Forgive me . . . please, send me not from your sight . . . master. . . .”  
> ***“I've lived for you . . . hurt for you and bled for you, my lord. Killed for you.”  
> “It is fitting that now I shall die for you. . . .”  
> ****“How I have loved to hurt in your service and at your pleasure, my lord.”  
> “How you love to make me hurt. Please. . . .”  
> *****“Who are you?”  
> \----------------------------------------------
> 
> I know, right? The plot thickens. . . .
> 
> . . . and congeals, too, but it's certainly rude of you to point that out.  
> ::pouts::
> 
> [Tumbly](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)!


	4. "Cameron Mitchell" and the "Crossified" Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after his Samaritan-moment, our Courier and his wary-shifty-clever “cross-man” have semi-proper introductions, and get to know each other a bit. Deebs sleeps through it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Allusions to mental illness brought about by a physical condition. Mentions of mental untidiness/disjointedness, dissociative disorder symptoms, including: fugue-states, amnesia, and detachment.
> 
> (See end of chapter for two Latin and two Spanish phrase translations, denoted by asterisks ( ***** ). Or just **Control + F** one, two, three, or four asterisks for fast/easy finding as you read? Whatever you prefer. Though, only the fourth phrase, in Latin, isn’t brief and self-explanatory.)

 

**“Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat.” –Erin Hunter, _Into the Wild_**

 

* * *

 

“* _Quis es_. . . ?”

 

It was edging on toward a yellow-white dawn, all grey-purple near the horizon, when Stranger was startled out of a light, but restless doze.

 

He’d nodded off just before false dawn, before the stars’d begun to fade and wash out. He’d surrounded his campsite with rocks to keep and radiate the heat his portable, solar-powered heater—about the circumference of top-hat and a quarter the height—put out. But he’d nonetheless been shivering so hard, he hadn’t expected to drift off for more than a minute or two. Unlike Deebs who, thanks to his mutt-fur, likely inherited from his coyote-parent, was toasty and comfortable. He put out almost as much warmth as the solar heater, and Stranger had sandwiched the still-unconscious cross-man between himself and Deebs—with the heater at the cross-man’s feet, for warmth-triangulation.

 

Despite his dehydration, the cross-man had been as likely to die of hypothermia, in his weakened state, as from loss of moisture. More so, since Stranger’d managed to painstakingly dribble and massage about ten ounces of water down the sleeping man’s throat without drowning him.

 

Now, Stranger blinked and squinted at the not-quite-sunrise, before looking over at the wakeful cross-man.

 

Meeting those pale eyes was like being dunked in ice-water, startling and bracing, but far from unpleasant. The redness surrounding those snowdrop irises was less irritated-looking than the night before, though that could have just been the forgiving light of dawn. His face was still gaunt and sunburned, though less angry-vivid, due to Stranger slathering the lion’s share of the aloe vera sunblock/burn cream the doc always made sure he carried, on the cross-man’s face— _especially_ his cracked and bleeding lips—and neck.

 

The cross-man’s skin had been dry and overheated . . . but also soft and slightly-chilled. Stranger’s aloe-slippery fingertips had lingered on the feverish brow, then the curve of the cross-man’s drawn cheeks. The skin of his jawline had been surprisingly smooth, no evidence of stubble just yet. Stranger’d reckoned, then, that the cross-man hadn’t been on his cross more than a half-day.

 

Now, giving the prone, blanket-and-clothing swaddled man a critical once-over, he decided it’d probably been far less. Mostly because the man was not only not-dead, but _awake_ so soon after being hung-out to dry like salted meat.

 

“** _¿Quién eres tú_?” the cross-man chuffed out after more than a minute had passed with Stranger staring like he hadn’t never seen a sunburned man, before. Those snowdrop eyes, though tired and blinky, were right-minded and keen. Assessing. Wary.

 

Stranger shrugged, looking away toward his pack, which sat outside the small ring of stones surrounding him, Deebs, and the cross-man. Next to the pack, on the side away from the warmed stones, was a three-quarters full bottle of water. “*** _Mi nombre es Cameron Mitchell, pero como dije, puedes llamarme_ Stranger _, si quieres_. Also . . . I speak English just fine. I can do whichever’s easier for you.”

 

In the silence that followed, contemplative and wary, Stranger reached for and snagged the water with one rangy-long arm, then turned to the cross-man again. He’d levered himself up a little, balancing on an elbow and arm that shook noticeably. Despite the obvious toll of remaining upright, which showed in the strain around his eyes and mouth, he was watching Stranger with open curiosity. On his other side, still sleeping deeply and snoring audibly, Deebs was a fuzzy, medium-brown, motionless dog-log.

 

Stranger squinted at said dog-log, rather than meet the cross-man’s gaze again. “Anyways. There’s more water, if you’re thirsty, still. I ‘magine y’are.”

 

Once again there was no reply, other than continued staring and measuring. Back gone up and eyes narrowing, Stranger let his gaze drift to the cross-man’s and settle. Held that cool, piercing stare with his own thousand-yard—Chet’s term—one and his so-called _lack of affect_.

 

Finally, the cross-man’s eyes narrowed, too, just a bit. Then he lowered his gaze to Stranger’s leg, and the water bottle Stranger held against his knobby knee.

 

“It is surprising that I am not dead. For several reasons,” the cross-man added, sounding as disappointed as he did relieved, then closing his strange, striking eyes and turning his face away from Stranger. When his compelling profile was aimed at the swiftly-paling firmament, he opened his eyes again sighed. “I suppose I should thank you, Mr. Mitchell. For saving my life.”

 

Which was, Stranger immediately noticed, quite different than an actual _thank you, Mr. Mitchell, for saving my life_.

 

Huffing softly, he shook his head. The only thing he knew about this cross-man—other than he had enemies who’d happily crucify a man, rather than end him quick and honest—was that he had it in him to prevaricate. And skillfully.

 

He’d bear watching, yes, indeed. Not that laying eyes on the cross-man had proven to be a chore, thus far.

 

“Don’t gotta thank me for nothin’. Common decency and human kindness don’t need harpin’ on or remarkin’ on,” Stranger grunted, repeating Doc Mitchell verbatim. Then found himself adding just as the doc had, though more wryly than hopefully: “Perhaps you’ll pay it forward, someday.”

 

The cross-man, still gazing at the washed-out stars above their heads, sighed again. The smile curving his healing lips was amused and patronizing, even in profile. “Perhaps I shall, at that,” he allowed with a disingenuousness that wasn’t remotely hidden. His soft tenor was rasping and chuffing, dry and dusty as the hardpan. Stranger remembered the water bottle and opened the cap. Then he reached across the half-foot of warmed space between them, nudging the cross-man’s swaddled arm lightly.

 

When the cross-man finished turning his head unhurriedly, but easily, those snowdrop eyes met Stranger’s. They were as amused and patronizing as his voice had been. Stranger was unused to reading folk with masks that covered their real thoughts and feelings and selves. But for Vic Pepper, that was, and sometimes the traders that came through town. And of those latter, usually only the ones trying to move the kinds of items Trudy didn’t appreciate in her Burg, t’all, bothered with masks and fake-selves.

 

Stranger instinctively didn’t trust people with more faces than they had fingers and toes. Didn’t trust people who lied or deceived or hid like breathing. And he certainly didn’t trust the cross-man. Rather, he _wouldn’t_ , were it to come down to it—wouldn’t trust the cross-man not to step on throats, even the throat of the man who’d saved his life, if it stood between him and whatever his goals might be.

 

But Stranger supposed that, for now, anyway, he could trust the man not to take a bite out of his arm under the guise of accepting a water bottle. He doubted he’d ever trust _this man_ with Deebs’ life, or Sunny’s or Doc Mitchell’s, but. . . .

 

 _Or my own life, either, I reckon_ , he tacked on belatedly, though doubtfully. But that seemed logical enough a move, since the cross-man was _already_ trying to kill him with that electric-snowdrops gaze.

 

Then, as the cross-man’s faint smile widened into something that was almost a smirk, Stranger’s face grew hot and he shook his head. He wondered why he was even thinking in terms of trusting the cross-man farther than the doc’s surgery. Once he’d been looked over and sent on his way, he’d likely make his way north and/or west. Likely to Vegas, or some such, as so many from the small towns dotting the vicinity of the Mojave tended to.

 

“**** _Ubi sum venire, et pravum vocant salvatores, Samaritae, ac_ flagitiosissimam factam _, et tunc, si sis felix . . . Statim ut crucifigerent eum.”_ Without breaking their gazes, the cross-man freed his hand from the covering of two blankets and Stranger’s changes of shirt with some effort. He reached slowly, laboriously for the bottle, his mask of patronizing amusement cracking for a moment. Long enough for Stranger to be _certain_ that the cross-man really was more of a cross- _boy_ , and that the mask was, indeed, a mask.

 

And though he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain of the quivering-churning mix of rage, despair, betrayal, and _lostness,_ shining out of those pale eyes and the mask-like expression of disinterest, some part of Stranger, deep in his gut and high in his chest—behind his eyes a bit, too—went out to the cross-man.

 

Stranger held the bottle closer, practically shoving it into the cross-man’s trembling, burnt-reddish hand. The hand was already less livid and painful-looking than it’d been ten hours ago. It also felt less tight and burning-hot/illness-cold, when Stranger’s blunt-dusty fingertips brushed the cross-man’s clever-capable fingers while passing off the bottle.

 

“My gratitude, Mr. Mitchell,” the cross-man murmured, inclining his head shallowly, but with surprisingly genuine deference and thanks. He even averted his gaze with strangely formal respect. Here, and for the price of a few sips of water, was more thanks than he’d evidenced for being taken off his cross.

 

After a few moments of holding the almost penitent posture, he struggled to sit fully upright, but stiffened when Stranger matter-of-factly helped him up and kept him that way. He shifted closer, and settled the cross-man against his side and under his arm.

 

The cross-man shivered, even though his body still gave off heat like a furnace. Even through the layers of Stranger’s spare shirts. Those snowdrop eyes ticked to Stranger’s with suspicion and other things Stranger couldn’t read, before they narrowed, then shut. He put the bottle to his lips and sighed.

 

When the cross-man tilted his head back to drink in small sips, the curve of his skull was both light and heavy, and also warm against Stranger’s shoulder. _Right_ , in a weird way nothing had ever been, since Stranger didn’t care either way for people touching him or not.

 

Nonetheless he, too, stiffened. He stared down at the cross-man’s sunburnt face and the somehow elegant column of his throat, and his mouth went dry.

 

And though Stranger couldn’t exactly sense his maelstrom-self on the horizon, or even near to the surface of his mind . . . he knew, somehow, it was laughing its horse’s-ass head clean off.

 

He stifled a sigh of his own, and when the cross-man’s arm began to shake soon after, Stranger took over holding the water bottle . . . and the cross-man’s hand ‘pon it. The cross-man stiffened again—rather, stiffened further—but continued to drink with measured sips.

 

Finally, he tilted his face slightly away and moved the bottle from his lips. His head shifted on Stranger’s tensed shoulder as he freed his hand from the bottle and Stranger’s gentle grip. Flushing for no reason, Stranger closed the bottle and placed it on the ground near his right knee, within the cross-man’s reach.

 

He made no move to let the cross-man go or to lay him back in the nest of spare shirts and blankets.

 

The cross-man _also_ made no move to be free of Stranger’s hold and support. He still smelled of sweat and sage, iron and wood—though less of the latter two, now—as well as Stranger’s sweat and the fading chemical-clean of laundered clothes, mesquite smoke and arid earth.

 

He smelled like the _both_ of them, warmed by body-heat and closeness, and that was, for some reason, extremely distracting to Stranger.

 

“You got a name? Or somethin’ you prefer to be called?” It rumbled up out of Stranger’s chest and throat like a chuckle, but far more solemn, since Stranger rarely expressed mirth of any kind. “I ain’t tryin’ to pry into your business, just figured you might not wanna be called _cross-man_ , all things considered. Even if it’s just while I’m thinkin’ ‘bout you.”

 

The cross-man hummed, sleepy and off-key. His head was inclined toward Stranger’s chest and collar bone, and Stranger could only see the top of his forehead, the tip of his pointy-patrician nose, and the slight curvature of his cheeks. All three were various shades of red.

 

“Have you so far, and do you anticipate doing so much more thinking about me, that it would be rude of me _not_ to tender a convenient label for myself?”

 

Frowning, Stranger thought that over for a few moments, before answering honestly. “Naw. No rudeness involved, on your part. But I have. And, I do. Think about you, that is.” The cross-man’s head turned toward Stranger a bit more, and up, to boot. Stranger could see the narrow bridge of his nose, now, burnt-red, too. He wanted, inexplicably, to kiss both bridge and tip, then slather on more of the doc’s aloe-cream. He supposed he had a reason to ask permission to do the latter, at least. Though he wouldn’t need to before full daylight. “Uhhhh . . . which don’t mean that’s gotta make _you_ no never mind. Just puttin’ it out there. You may not give a sailin’ shit _what_ _I_ call you, but I still don’t wanna slip and call you somethin’ that makes you think about how you were just crucified. Well, _crossified_ , I s’pose, and almost to death. I hear tell that reminders of nearly dyin’ . . . bother some folk, a touch.”

 

Stranger could feel the cross-man’s surprise, then his silent amusement: a gentle, near intangible quaking that shifted him closer to Stranger. When Stranger instinctively held the cross-man a little tighter, and closer, still, the cross-man didn’t stiffen, this time. He even relaxed some, the tension in his firm, but shaking body easing palpably.

 

“Some folk, yes. I imagine such reminders _can_ be quite unpleasant, for . . . _some folk_ ,” the cross-man finally agreed, slightly breathless, and with a hard-high edge to his pleasant voice that made Stranger think words like _hysteria_ and _trauma_. And _broken_. Though, he shut those words down quickish. He wasn’t any kind of doctor, and also, had no right to cast stones, considering that his entire world was made of cheap glass.

 

No right to, and no _interest_ in being cruel to a man who’d just got done being hung-out and dried like strips of heretic jerky.

 

When the cross-man finally stopped laughing, he all but melted into Stranger’s side and under his arm, turning his face up just enough to meet Stranger’s gaze with his startling-pale one. It was a difficult gaze to hold, not because Stranger tended to find meeting people’s eyes difficult, but because he’d so _rarely_ had such a problem. The list of people with occasionally difficult gazes was only two people long and _only_ occasional. Under specific circumstances.

 

Only when time’d rolled back a decade for those two people, and the dead boy that linked them seemed a little _less_ dead . . . for a short while.

 

 _Then_ , Stranger couldn’t meet those hopeful-sad-expectant gazes because they _hurt_. In some indescribable way, they hurt to his _core_. And for many reasons which he didn’t have the language to explain, but that his heart understood deeply and implicitly.

 

Now, looking down into the cross-man’s eyes, Stranger realized that this gaze hurt, _too_ . . . but in a vastly different way. And it made him feel naked and seen-into. As if he was being weighed and measured. Quantified and categorized. As if he was a device made to do a certain thing or numbers of things, and the cross-man was trying to figure out which levers and pulleys did what, and how to turn the whole device to his advantage.

 

For the first time, Stranger felt as if he wasn’t a stranger. Not to the cross-man and not to himself. If only because they both grasped a truth that no one else might have before.

 

Stranger _liked_ being figured out—liked being studied and sussed. Liked that someone was _finally_ taking the time to _see_ what might _actually be there_ , rather than what they wished or assumed would be there. Liked that the cross-man looked at him and saw _uses_ , or the possibility and potential for them. Liked that the cross-man was at least considering him for some sort of . . . allyship? Friendship?

 

The former, perhaps. Stranger sensed the cross-man didn’t have or tend to make many of those latter.

 

“Whatever your name is, I’d . . . I’d like to be your friend,” Stranger heard himself say, then looked away when the cross-man blinked at him, all amused, if not kind condescension. Stranger stared at the water bottle just beyond his gangly shin. At the tiny hole in the right knee of his dusty jeans. “I’ll call you whatever you like and I’ll be your friend, if you want.”

 

“Is that so?” the cross-man countered, his voice starting to chuff and huff. His throat probably pained him from dehydration. And screaming, if he’d done that before Stranger’d happened ‘pon him. “I am no one to you. Why would you want to be my friend?”

 

“’Cause I get the feelin’ that maybe your _old_ friends leave a lot to be desired,” Stranger mumbled, glancing over his shoulder at the cross. In the dawn light, it looked like it was made of fire and blood. Dropping his gaze to the cross-man’s once again was a relief. For a moment, anyway. There was distance in those snowdrop eyes that hadn’t been there a few moments ago.

 

“Perhaps that is so. But it need not concern you,” he said, frosty and enunciated. “You have performed your charitable deed—more than most would have, for certain. The rest need not concern you.”

 

“ _The rest_?” Stranger snorted and smiled a bit. “You mean _not_ leavin' a man to flounder on his own when he’s at his weakest? _Not_ pullin’ someone off a cross, only to leave them to die in the desert? Why bring you down t’all, if _that’s_ as far as I’m willin’ to see it through?”

 

The cross-man’s brow furrowed and this time his gaze was the one to drop. His mouth turned down in a slight frown and he sighed. “I . . . would rather you leave me to fend for myself or die, if it meant . . . not becoming more beholden to you. Or . . . more of a . . . burden upon you.”

 

His voice was chuffier than ever, barely more than forced, shaped air wheezing out of a tired throat. Stranger stared at his averted face for more than a minute before lightly touching the cross-man’s chin with his index finger and tilting it back toward his own. The expression this occasioned was both wary and somehow . . . shamed. And his gaze was no longer steady, but skittering and frustrated. Angry, but not at Stranger, it was obvious.

 

“Y’ain’t beholden or a burden. Not to _me_.” Stranger let his fingers fall away from the cross-man’s chin, even though he didn’t want to. “Even if I wasn’t payin’ forward the kindness that was once done for _me_ , I’d still wanna help you, and make sure you’re alright and in a position to _stay_ that way. I’d still. . . .”

 

“What?” the cross-man asked softly, his gaze gone steady and intent once more. Stranger held it, but only because he fought to. “You would still _what_?”

 

“Aww, hellfire.” Stranger shrugged, and was unsure what he’d meant to say and if he even wanted to say it. This felt like it might be one of a few feelings or ideas he could follow to its source and conclusion, if he kept at it. But now didn’t seem like the time and the Mojave sure wasn’t the place. “I dunno. Just wanna help, is all. Not just ‘cause it’s the decent thing but because you . . . seem like you might need a friend. And though I ain’t an expert on people or talkin’, if you need or want a friend . . . I can be that.”

 

“Sometimes, people need and want many things. They rarely get them, however.” When Stranger’s only response was another shrug, the cross-man sighed. “I am unable to repay you for a debt which is already rather large. If remuneration is something you expect—”

 

Stranger shook his head twice. “It’s _not_.”

 

“Then _what_ do you expect? What do you wish of me? There _must_ be something.”

 

“Must there?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Staring down into the cross-man’s hard, insistent eyes for so long, Stranger felt lost and shaken and scattered. More so than usual. He blinked, and licked his lips and fought another shrug, this one nervous.

 

“Then, I wish you to be safe and well,” he said finally, and though it sounded awkward and a bit sullen, it was true. And the cross-man seemed to not disbelieve him, because though he looked frustrated and exasperated, he also seemed somewhat mollified. “Whether that bothers you or not, it’s what I want. And I aim to see that through, whatever it takes.”

 

“Indeed?” The cross-man’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he somehow hissed a word with no hissable syllables. “Is there no hoped-for or desired outcome at the end of your . . . charity? Some gain that you, personally, receive from my well-being and secured welfare?”

 

“Not that I know of, no,” Stranger said slowly, even though his mind was whirling and giddy for some reason. “Don’t see how there could be. Y’ain’t a burden, and I’ll never say _y’are_ , but y’ain’t _easy_ , either. Even when you’re all weak and tired and thirsty from bein’ crossified.”

 

The cross-man blinked, obviously surprised and at a loss for a few moments. Then he snorted softly and smiled. Almost instantly, it turned into a yawn. When the yawn ended, his body felt heavier and less tense against Stranger’s. Almost lax.

 

“You are . . . an unusual man, Mr. Mitchell. Refreshingly so,” the cross-man added, with another small, slightly amused smile, but no patronization. Stranger huffed and smiled back a little, though he acknowledged it wasn’t remotely a fair return on the cross-man’s smile. _His smile_ was nice-looking in a mischievous and potentially dangerous way. Stranger’s smile just looked painful and uncertain, or so he’d been told.

 

“ _Mr. Mitchell_ ain’t anyone left in Goodsprings, that’s for sure. My Pa’s _Dr_. Mitchell or just Emmett. And I’m just Cameron. To Doc Mitchell, anyway. To everyone else, I’m just _Stranger_.”

 

A brief and slight line formed between the cross-man’s brows: there and gone in less than a blink. His eyes were once more solemn in their curiosity and consideration. “I see. And would you prefer to be _Stranger_ , to me, as well? Or _Cameron_? Or some other name?”

 

Stranger frowned. “Never much thought about it. Never really cared so long as I knew who was bein’ spoke to.”

 

“Hmm.” The cross-man’s smile returned, fleeting but genuine, as he reached up slowly, his arm and hand shaking. He placed his index finger at the top of Stranger’s nose, just between his eyebrows, then drew his fingertip down along the prominent, curving length of it. “You have tribal blood, yes?”

 

Shivering under the cross-man’s warm-chilled touch, light as a feather and precise as a scalpel, Stranger swallowed, but otherwise held still. And he planned to for as long as the cross-man seemed inclined to learn his face by touch.

 

“I s’pose. Buncha folk in Goodsprings say I got Navajo features.” Stranger shrugged, but only barely. The cross-man’s fingertip traced his left cheekbone, then down along the stark, defined—fuzz-scruffed—line of his jaw, to his chin. “Ah . . . ‘cept for the height and all the face-scruff. Doc Mitchell says I prob’ly got Viking or Sasquatch or somethin’ in my background—or _someone_ who was big an’ hairy an’ pale. Don’t matter to me, no kinda way.”

 

“Hmm.” The cross-man’s fingertip, which had paused after its third go-‘round of tracing Stranger’s mouth, made a lateral move, across his cheek, to the aforementioned scruff on Stranger’s face. Then up the edge of his sideburns, to his temple. Along his hairline, following the curve of it to Stranger’s widow’s peak, then down once more, to where it’d started . . . right between Stranger’s eyes and above his nose.

 

The cross-man’s eyes had followed his finger idly, but now he looked into Stranger’s eyes again. His gaze was still solemn and intense—not hooded, but difficult for Stranger to read. “If you wish me to call you _Stranger_ , I will. However, names should never be lies or inaccuracies. I do not know you, Cameron Mitchell, yet I would not say that we are strangers to each other. Not exactly.”

 

Stranger swallowed again, but didn’t dare nod, for fear of losing the warm-cool touch of the cross-man’s articulate finger. “Y-You can call me _Cameron_ , then. Or _Cam_ ,” he added, breathless and in a voice that creaked and nearly cracked. The cross-man’s smile reappeared, wide and smug and pleased.

 

“That is a more acceptable moniker, I suppose. Strong and handsome, in its own way . . . uncommon without being ostentatious. It suits you.”

 

Stranger’s brows shot up and his jaw dropped. The cross-man snorted and smirked and looked down, his hand dropping away from Stranger’s face, but only so far as the top of his chest, where it rested lightly, familiarly.

 

“And you may call me _Fox_ , if you care to call me at all.” When Stranger’s just-settling brows shot up again, the cross-man snuck an amused glance at him before looking down again. He stared at his hand, where it rested on Stranger’s buttoned-up, blue-plaid shirt, and shook his head and laughed. “Should you choose to extend our acquaintance beyond escaping the desert in each other’s company, you will likely realize that _Fox_ is perhaps a more accurate name for me than you now realize or will eventually care for.”

 

“Maybe. It for _damn-sure_ ain’t a lie,” Stranger said—rather, _heard himself_ say from an abrupt but marked remove. But by the time the cross-man looked up at him again, questioning and without wariness, Stranger blinked and was fully inhabiting himself again: no more remove, grounded and present.

 

But he could taste ozone at the back of his throat and his brain, and hear the after-echoes of his maelstrom-self’s braying laughter. And he knew whose influence he had to thank for the sudden beginnings of a hard-on he just really didn’t want to wrangle.

 

“ _Fox_ . . . I can, uh, call you that,” Stranger said, unable to fight off a scowl at the thought of the maelstrom commandeering his mouth to make its usual horse’s-ass remarks heard, and commandeering his dick to make its usual inappropriate responses felt. “It . . . fits.”

 

“And you . . . disapprove of the name? Or perhaps disapprove of my affinity for such an animal?” the cross-man asked in his playful/solemn/dangerous way. And though what this mask was hiding was more obvious than the cross-man realized, what was revealed was not an emotion Stranger understood, recognized, or had any reference for. He saw it, but could not even name it. He wasn’t even sure if it was pleasant for the cross-man, or not. Or, somehow, both.

 

So, he smiled down at the cross-man, as kind and honest as he could. “Naw. Neither. Anyway, _my_ approval’s got nothin’ to do with it. It’s your call to make and you’re the one’s gotta answer to it. My place is just to respect that and abide by it. Though . . . foxes _are_ weird little critters. Tougher to figure than most.”

 

Now, the cross-man— _Fox_ —was practically grinning, toothy and rakish and slightly disquieting. But once again more _pleased_ , than anything. “I see. And by _tough_ , you mean. . . ?”

 

Chuckling, Stranger didn’t resist the urge to cover the hand on his chest with his own. He could feel his heartbeat through both their hands. “Well, foxes look like dogs but act like cats. That’s . . . a might unsettlin’. Seems like they ain’t hardly one nor the other, really. Or maybe they’re _both_ . . . I dunno. Can’t never tell _what_ kinda behavior you’re gonna get from a fox: canine or feline. Or _some other_ damn thing.”

 

Fox laughed, the faint crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes crinkling. His pale eyes seemed to glow gold and rose in the desert dawn. “Yes. It is difficult to trust what one cannot predict.”

 

“Precisely,” Stranger agreed, grinning for no reason other than grinning was obviously the natural response to seeing Fox amused and relaxed . . . and without his many masks.

 

“And are you so enamored, then, of predictability and routines?” Fox asked, playful once again, but with more actual amusement than danger. Stranger’s smile slipped a bit, nonetheless.

 

“Last real unpredictable thing that happened to me was a bullet in my head,” he said wry and quiet, and Fox’s eyes widened in shock. Stranger’s hand left Fox’s and drifted up to his forehead, and the pale-ish, roughly circular scar above his left eyebrow. It was probably barely visible in the still-iffy light. “It’s a tale I’d tell you, if I could remember it. But I can’t. And maybe . . . I dunno. Maybe I _was_ the sorta man who expected to be murdered as happenstance. Maybe I was the kinda man who was _always_ runnin’ on borrowed time. Maybe . . . a buncha stuff. Dunno _what_ kinda man I was before I died and might never know. Alla him got burnt away, and I’m just the headaches and symptoms . . .  the _simpleton_ that’s left.”

 

Now, Fox was frowning. His hand on Stranger’s chest, over the sudden thudding of his heart, was heavy. _Stranger’s_ face felt like a mask, now. The _lack of affect_ -mask that let nothing in and _kept_ everything in. For a few seconds, it felt as if his face—his mind—was being smothered and crushed in a vise. Locked forever in a prison that’d started out as a fortress.

 

Then, the hand over his heart pressed firmly, fingers curving inward, until the tips were biting almost possessively into Stranger’s shirts and his flesh. Stranger’s stare, wall-like as ever, met Fox’s intent and bracing-startling one.

 

“Not that. _Never_ that,” Fox said, low and thoughtful, but steely and certain, too. Despite the paleness and opaqueness of his gaze, there was something in the way he looked at Stranger that put Stranger in mind of the mutt sawing logs on Fox’s other side.

 

Deebs always looked at Stranger as if at an adored and kindred spirit. And though Fox . . . hardly seemed the type for adoring or kindreding, his gaze _was_ nearly fond. Still canny and a bit wary, and still assessing and amused . . . but _nearly fond_ , too.

 

Endeared, perhaps. Maybe a tiny bit.

 

“ _You_ ain’t predictable at all. You’re like a _riddle_ , all twists and tricks and ten steps ahead of me,” Stranger admitted, shaking his head a little, but smiling a little, too. It felt as if the walls that were normally present in his eyes—but so far _not_ normally present while in Fox’s company—were coming back down. As if Stranger could breathe and take in the other man, as he had been. And Fox’s eyes were shuttered by his eyelashes for a moment. Those lashes were longer than Stranger had noticed previously and fawn-colored—about five shades lighter than his military-precise hair. But still not as light as the eyes that held Stranger’s so steadily. “I mean, I ain’t the best reader of people, but you’re . . . not like anyone I ever met and everything you say is unexpected ‘cause I don’t know how to guess what you might say next. Or do.”

 

“I . . . see,” Fox said again, his lips twitching to the sides, neither smile nor frown, just a twitch. “And do you find that . . . disagreeable?”

 

“Not at all.” Stranger’s smile felt odd, now. Hapless and helpless and ridiculous. It felt like it was practically a grin again, all toothy and goofy. He cleared his throat, looked down, looked back _up_ , then just shrugged and let the smile-grin be whatever it wanted and was. Fox was still watching him with that hooded and keen attention. “Ain’t a _damned_ thing about you I find disagreeable, cro— _Fox_. I like riddles just fine. And I like _you_. ‘S long as y'ain’t plannin’ to put a bullet in my head and bury me alive.”

 

Stranger meant it as a joke—and it would’ve been his first, had it come out a bit less . . . bare and pleading and sincere.

 

Fox blinked and his lips twitched again. This time, it was definitely a smile, but one that Stranger couldn’t read.

 

“Where you are concerned, neither of those possibilities is part of my plans,” he finally said, solemn once more and as earnest as Stranger suspected Fox ever got.

 

And Stranger wanted to ask Fox if he always had a plan. If he’d had one before he wound up on his cross, catching daylight in the desert. If Fox’s plans ever contained contingencies that allowed for bullets and shallow graves . . . even when the person those plans centered on was a friend.

 

He wanted to ask Fox if he knew that _not planning_ on eventually ending a friend . . . and actually _refusing to do so_ if the necessity and opportunity presented itself, were two different things. For though Stranger knew damned-near fuck-all about anything, he knew that much, at least.

 

But Stranger didn’t ask. If such questions and distinctions were obvious to him, they were no doubt obvious to someone as clever as Fox seemed to be.

 

And, anyway, Stranger had long since learned not to ask questions of himself or others that’d likely result in answers he’d be better off not knowing.

 

Fox’s smile turned a bit sardonic, as if he could read the tenor of Stranger’s thoughts. He chuckled tiredly, dryly. Stranger winced and reached for the water bottle again.

 

“That throat must still pain you a bit,” he said and this time, when he held up the water bottle, Fox’s hand covered his. Together, they held the bottle to his mouth, and he leaned back against Stranger and still under his arm, drinking briefly.

 

“The Mojave is a place of extremes, the night, just as the day,” Fox said when he was done taking his measured sips. He cleared his throat gently and didn’t look up at Stranger. Just stayed settled under his arm and against his side, shivering a bit, as if he was cold again. More than willing to be obliging, Stranger held Fox closer and a bit tighter, the long, blunt fingers of one large hand stroking instinctively down and up Fox’s shoulder and bicep. When the other man didn’t seem to mind, Stranger let it become an automatic action. Even so small a gesture, if it was comforting and reassuring to Fox—or, at the very least, _not disagreeable_ —became a necessity in Stranger’s mind, like breathing or blinking.

 

“You should sleep,” Stranger murmured, when Fox’s head on his shoulder grew heavier, his body more relaxed and acquiescent in the protective, supporting frame of Stranger’s own.

 

“I have already slept.”

 

“You should sleep _more_.”

 

“I believe that I am well enough to—” Fox began huffily, tensing as if to sit up. But he was interrupted by his own yawn and the resulting lassitude that usually followed a good, long yawn. He muttered something in that other, not-Spanish language he spoke, and it sounded like a swear. Stranger snorted.

 

“Since I ain’t movin’ on from this spot ‘fore sun-up tomorrow, you might as well catch some rest.”

 

Silence for a few minutes. Then Fox sighed, soft and put-upon.

 

“You are exasperatingly stubborn.”

 

“What happened to refreshin’?”

 

“I, too, was wondering the same thing.”

 

“Ha!” The laugh was all but goosed out of Stranger. It echoed off the sky above their heads and the hardpan under their asses. On Fox’s other side, Deebs twitched and grumbled in his sleep. “Somethin’ tells me you know a _lot_ more about _stubborn_ than I do.”

 

“Some have noted that about me, yes. My _tenacity_ is one of my more . . . useful qualities. Until . . . _some_ cease to find it so. But such is the way of the world.” Fox’s voice was amused, dismissive, and _angry_. Then he sighed again. “I have no wish to be a burden on you. You are . . . very kind. Very patient. But . . . perhaps you should not be.”

 

“Perhaps not.” Stranger shrugged yet again and held Fox a tiny bit closer. “Get some sleep. Ain’t neither of us goin’ anywhere before tomorrow.”

 

“If you insist . . . Cameron,” Fox finally said after another yawn. Stranger shivered at the deliberate use and emphasis of a name that’d never felt like his before this moment.

 

But it sounded _right_ on Fox’s tongue. It had weight and meaning that had nothing to do with a dead boy and the town that still grieved for him.

 

It meant whoever Stranger was _now_ and perhaps whoever he _could be_ in the not-so-distant future.

 

It meant . . . _something_. Something that was both humble and momentous and _real_. It was all the address, acknowledgement, and _acceptance_ that Stranger had ever wanted to hear. And he wanted to keep hearing it as often as possible in that smooth, playful-dangerous voice. Wanted to think about _his name_ lingering on Fox’s supple lips and expressive mouth. . . .

 

“I, uh, insist. Yeah,” Stranger confirmed belatedly, recollecting himself and letting out a slow, shaking breath. He felt disoriented and distracted. _Riled_ , but for once not in a horrible and frightening way. “Get some sleep, Fox. You’re safe, now. I won’t let anything or anyone else hurt you. Not while there’s breath an’ fight in me. Go to sleep.”

 

“Hmmm. . . .” Fox’s hum was drawn-out and drifting, sad and more than a little incredulous. But it wasn’t long before his body was completely loose and given-over against Stranger’s, his breathing slow and even, and his heavy head lolling on Stranger’s collar bone and chest.

 

The swift-bright light of dawn played rose-gold notes on Fox’s exposed olive-pink skin. Especially on the graceful curve of his elegant neck. . . .

 

By the time Deebs, whining and grumbling and huffing, shook himself awake a while later, the sky was _noticeably_ lighter. The sun was noticeably _higher_ and Fox—the erstwhile cross-man—was noticeably, but softly snoring in Stranger’s vigilant, shielding arms.

 

#

 

**Translated Phrases:**

*“Who are you?”

**“Who are you?”

***“My name's Cameron Mitchell, but like I said, you can call me _Stranger_ , if you want.”

****“Where I come from, we call saviors and Samaritans _degenerate_ and _profligate_ , and then, if they're lucky . . . we crucify them straight away.”

 

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And SUPER-MASSIVE THANKS to my peeps at the Block. If this fic is any good . . . well. Thank them. Most especially [Ghostofshe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostofshe), whose fic, [Fire & Water](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8285711/chapters/18981743), still has the best and most layered Vulpes Inculta I've ever read. AND he's in an M/M relationship, too. So, there :-P
> 
> Oh, and by "thank"? I mean read and comment. And subscribe, so you don't miss installments <3


	5. No Rest for the Wicked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which _everything_ has a learning curve, even budding companionship. But figuring out ways to make learning _fun_ is part of that curve, and Stranger’s not the only one to have that realization.
> 
> All of which is a fancy way of saying: _**(not-too-)awkward smut ahead.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Referenced amnesia/health issues due to brain trauma. Recovery from extremely successful situation. Burgeoning smut, consent issues, _discussion of consent issues_ , compromise, and _actual_ smut. Loss of sort-of-virginity. Nascent pain-play and hinted-at masochism. Oh, and more not-Spanish. (See end of chapter for Latin phrase translations, denoted by asterisks (*). Or just **CTRL + F** one, two, three, etc. asterisks for fast/easy finding as you read? Whatever you prefer.)

**No Rest for the Wicked**

 

“You . . . appear to be as good as your word, Cameron Mitchell.”

 

Stranger smiled a little as Fox—who hadn’t yet moved since waking a minute ago, other than to take deeper breaths—yawned and shifted in his arms a bit, turning his warm, healing face toward Stranger. Fox inhaled deeply, and the rush of air past the heated-damp skin of Stranger’s throat was shiver-causing in a way that was startling and arousing. Stranger’s hold of Fox instinctively tightened, his head inclining toward the smaller man’s crown. His hair still smelled of dust and sage, and very faintly of pig iron.

 

“I try to be,” Stranger replied almost shyly, and Fox sighed. It was another shiver-causing rush of cooler air that may as well have been an ice cube drawn down Stranger’s skin, for its contrast with the dead-crisp heat of the Mojave, and the purposeful beat of the sun ascending toward the top of the sky.

 

Fox’s hand settled high on Stranger’s chest, just over the strong, suddenly accelerated beat of his heart. “Thank you for guarding my rest.”

 

“I was glad to do it. Uhhh . . . you hot?” Stranger asked the still-relaxed man in his arms. Fox hummed and chuckled.

 

“I am not.”

 

“’Kay. Um. You . . . want some water?” Stranger started to shift, as if to lean forward to reach for the bottle still sitting just beyond his knee. But Fox made a petulant, protesting sound that wasn’t terribly different from the sigh.

 

“Perhaps in a few minutes. For the moment, I am fine,” he said, his solid body settling even more firmly against and into Stranger’s own. Stranger ceased his reaching and relaxed into stillness, once more. This time, the sound Fox made was sleepy, smug, and _satisfied_.

 

“Definitely feline,” Stranger murmured, chuckling. Fox hummed again, his fingers crooking and straightening—his slightly grown-out fingernails scratching and scratching—lazily, but decisively across the rangy-lean flesh between Fox’s fingertips and Stranger’s near-tizzied heart.

 

“I suppose,” Fox agreed in a tone that was almost playful. “For the moment.”

 

“Hmm. Maybe someday soon I’ll get to hear you purr.”

 

The silence that followed that nonsensical, outlandish statement—really, Stranger had _no idea_ why he’d said it or even what he’d possibly _meant_ by it . . . and sadly, no reason to think the maelstrom was behind it, either—was exactly three beats longer than Stranger would’ve liked for his peace of mind.

 

“That . . . depends on how much time and attention you are willing to invest in coaxing such a sound from me, Cameron,” was Fox’s amused-playful-dangerous reply, his nails still scritch-scratching steadily. Stranger unsuccessfully stifled a groan and the reactionary hard-on that’d gotten its single-minded start not long after Deebs had gone off in search of his usual desert breakfast-and-exercise. “Certainly, if anyone stands a promising chance of doing so. . . .”

 

Stranger’s eyes, already shut on the white-bright light of the desert-in-midmorning, squinched tighter, until he could see and feel the red-heat beat of his pulse in his eyeballs and temples. In the lips he had pinched closed, so as to keep any other telling and stupid statements from escaping.

 

Fox tilted his face up a bit, until _his_ lips brushed the scruff-dusted underside of Stranger’s right jaw. His mouth was curved in a smile and the scritch-scratching nails were drifting slowly, steadily downward, over chest and ribs, then inward a little over stomach and abdomen. As they ghosted over Stranger’s t-shirt-covered belt buckle, then shoved under the t-shirt, Stranger gasped. Then gasped again as those nails dragged momentary, but energizing furrows down his slightly sweaty skin. Only to drift up again, all the way to where Stranger’s heartbeat was staggering and stuttering like a drunk trying to find his way home.

 

Fox’s clever fingers lingered over the riotous tattoo, then pressed into the skin and muscle over it, nails-first. A breathless-soft sound escaped Stranger’s throat that he’d never made before, leaving him shaken and mortified. But Fox chuckled and murmured something rumbling, nearly-tender, and approving as he traced around Stranger’s left nipple with his index fingernail. He kept doing that with marginally decreasing circles until his fingernail slowed its motion, only to drag slower, still, over Stranger’s sensitized-hard nipple.

 

“F-Fox,” Stranger gulped out in a voice that sounded younger and more uncertain than Stranger’s normal timber. But even so, still sounded older than Stranger’s technical age of seventeen-ish months. “Wh-what’re you. . . ?”

 

But Stranger trailed off. Even he knew that that question would be a real _idjit_ -one, considering.

 

Fox was nuzzling his unhurried way up to Stranger’s cheek, then his mouth, pausing at the right corner. Light, humid breaths puffed against Stranger’s mouth and Fox’s insistent index fingernail became teasing passes with his fingertip.

 

Then Stranger gasped and groaned when those lulling caresses became a sudden, sharp pinch and tug. Fox hummed and chuckled once more, slotting his lips against Stranger’s more firmly and at an angle, then darting his tongue into Stranger’s mouth lightning-quick. He continued pinching and twisting Stranger’s nipple, sometimes hard and sharp, sometimes just teasing and tugging. Sometimes alternating feather-strokes with wicked tweaks.

 

Through it all, he also nibbled and licked, murmured against and kissed Stranger’s lower lip. But it was only when Stranger groaned, low and long and raw—his hand dropping to and arm winding around Fox’s waist, before pulling the other man tight against him—that Fox sighed, his hand petting and gentling the spot above Stranger’s heartbeat. And when Stranger, practically panting, turned his face down toward Fox’s, it was in time to receive another kiss. Just a soft press of Fox’s lips to Stranger’s lower one at first. Then, Fox was capturing Stranger’s lip between his own, a soft-wet-dry trap that Stranger never wanted to be freed from.

 

With another hum, amused and appreciative, Fox shifted a bit, leaned closer somehow, and up. His lips parted unequivocally, and even before he could attempt more teases and tickles of his tongue into Stranger’s mouth, Stranger was surging forward into this second kiss— _his_ second kiss.

 

Though, not really just his _second_. Not considering the way his body managed to do it so familiarly and smoothly—and _well_ , if Fox’s surprised and pleased moans were anything to go by.

 

Both their mouths tasted dry and dusty and bland, and Fox’s lips were still tender and sore and healing. Stranger’s were mildly-chapped. But despite all that, it was still . . . still. . . .

 

Stranger didn’t know _what_ it was, only that it was perfect, and he hoped it never ended.

 

Though, it did pause, briefly, when Fox pinched his nipple again, soft at first, then with increasing pressure, and bite from those nails of his.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Stranger puffed on Fox’s lips, opening his eyes to gaze into Fox’s pale ones. They were opened wide and dilated so that only a thin-thin ring of that icy-bracing pale was still visible.

 

“If that is what you wish,” he replied, puffing, himself. Any too much harder with the pinching and the nails, and he’d surely break Stranger’s skin significantly. Even the thought was enough to make the hard-on—which really needed no more encouraging—start edging its way toward intractable. “If that is what you wish of me, you will find me acquiescent.”

 

“ _Just_ acquiescent?” Stranger rumbled, leaning his forehead down and against Fox’s. They were both sweating and over-warm to the touch. Fox’s fingers clamped down and Stranger hissed as pain crescendoed both sharp and sweet. He was murmur-chanting something, but had no idea what as his arousal reached an intensity it never had before. A point at which he could be fairly certain that willing it away was no longer an option, as it had been in previous moments of arousal. . . .

 

Then Fox was slowly easing his touch, backing them both away from this unsuspected—by Stranger—precipice over which they’d leaned. Stranger groaned and submitted himself to more kisses that were light and soothing, rather than rousing . . . to more petting and gentling of the area directly above his heartbeat.

 

“I can be whatever you desire of me,” Fox murmured, but sounded somewhat uncertain. And more than a little drained, too. And like a slap on the back of his fool head, Stranger remembered that Fox was still dehydrated and recovering from being crossified. He sat back instinctively.

 

Fox blinked those keen-pretty eyes at him and smirked. But the longer Stranger stared and frowned, the smirk faded. Soon, Fox simply seemed tired, frustrated, and rueful, and lowered his gaze. “Or if _nothing_ is what you desire of me, then I shall keep a respectful dist—”

 

“ _No_.” Stranger caught Fox’s wrist as the other man twitched his hand away from Stranger’s chest and started to slip from under his shirt. “No.”

 

Those snowdrop eyes met Stranger’s again, all wariness and questions, and Stranger held it. Held Fox’s gaze even as he let his hand slide up to clasp Fox’s.

 

Even as he dropped their hands down to the body heat-warmed belt buckle.

 

Even as he dropped their hands lower, _still_.

 

Fox’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in understanding, and in the next moment, he was smiling as Stranger grunted and bucked up a little against the resting, heavy weight of their hands on his hard-on. The back of Fox’s hand against Stranger’s palm felt like warmed satin. His palm felt like heated iron with a thick covering of velvet against Stranger’s eager, touch-starved dick—even through the faded-thin denim of Stranger’s jeans.

 

“Is _this_ what you wish of me, Cameron?” Fox whispered, his lips brush-caresses as much as they were words. His hand remained as it was, merely pressing and slightly curled around the denim-covered tip of Stranger’s dick. Stranger didn’t attempt to push that hand closer or even to buck up against it again. His conscience was still haranguing him, but making out what it was on about was difficult over the rushthrobpulse of body and blood.

 

“You’re . . . you’re still recoverin’, Fox. . . .”

 

“That is of no moment. _This is_ ,” Fox hissed, leaning up to catch Stranger’s lower lip again, this time between sharp-relentless teeth. Stranger groaned, then doubled-down on that groan when Fox suddenly shifted his hand and cupped Stranger’s balls through his jeans. It was only then that Stranger noticed the near-painful throb of them . . . especially in the wake of Fox’s steady-tight-cruel squeezing.

 

“M-Mayhap. That don’t mean I’m aimin’ to take advantage of a man who almost died—”

 

“ _Almost_ is the most pathetic sort of _did not-_ dodge.” Unlike the dirty, no-nonsense hand on Stranger’s balls, Fox’s voice and tone were disdainful and haughty. Which was also, somehow, a turn-on. One that made Stranger cry out, wavering, but low. And clearly Fox approved because he rewarded that cry with faster and increasingly intense squeezes that made Stranger gasp for what felt like his very life.

 

“* _Tu exanimandas ac cupio te vehementer_. . . .” Fox sighed into Stranger’s mouth, before claiming it once more, slow and thorough and wanton.

 

“Goddamnit, _Fox_ ,” Stranger moaned around Fox’s clever, relentless tongue. Then that tortuous hand released his balls only to grab his dick and resume its squeezing. Only now, it was interspersed with slow, hard stroking that made Stranger throw his head back and shout. Fox chuckled and nipped hickeys into his throat and neck. Stinging ones that nearly broke skin. “Fuck, ah, _fuck_. . . .”

 

“** _Et beatos vos iubes ut ‘_ domini _,’ quod possessurus sim eam. . . ._ ” Fox purred, nuzzling and licking, and still nipping. Nipping so hard, it was probably biting, at that point.

 

“L-Listen, Fox, _please_ . . . I dunno wh-what you’re doin’—or _sayin_ —but . . . I don’t want—”

 

“You _do_ want, Cameron,” he insisted, hoarse and slightly breathless. “You are in _need_ and I . . . *** _olim erat amans nunquam meae eligendo._ ”

 

“Fox—” Stranger fought for self-control and composure, and looked down, reaching up to cup Fox’s ridiculous-handsome face in his big, dusty hands. Those pale eyes were wide and dilated, once more. “ _Yes_ , I want you. I got eyes and I _ain’t_ made of stone. Well, _some_ parts of me ain’t,” he added wryly after Fox quirked his right eyebrow and gave Stranger’s dick another encouraging stroke. “But that don’t mean I gotta _have_ you. Like you said, a lotta people want a lotta things, but they don’t always get ‘em.”

 

Fox’s smile was wistful and a little melancholy. “Cameron . . . if you count me among the things you want, I assure you . . . you may _also_ count me among the things you will _get_.”

 

“Well, fuck, you’re just _not_ gonna make this easy on me, are ya?” Stranger huffed out around a ragged laugh, rolling his eyes. Fox smirked.

 

“The more you resist what you obviously desire, the more _I_ desire to drive you to _take it_.”

 

“You’re _still recoverin’_ ,” Stranger reiterated, holding Fox’s gaze and somehow finding the wherewithal to catch and still the hand teasing his dick so expertly. “Gonna be for at least several days. You’re still sunburned and dehydrated and exhausted. The last thing you need to be doin’ is takin’ dick from some dusty, dumb-ass rube. You need rest and carin’-for. It’s a long walk back to Goodsprings, but once we’re there, and after Pa gives you a clean bill of health. . . .”

 

“ _Please_ ,” Fox said simply, with a slow, soulful blink of those wide, suspiciously vulnerable-innocent eyes, while leaning into Stranger’s hand still cupping his face. Without looking away, he pressed a soft kiss to the base of Stranger’s right thumb. Stranger brushed that thumb along Fox’s cheek.

 

And he wanted. Above damn-near everything else, he wanted.

 

But his empathy and common sense were pretty insistent and powerful, of a sudden.

 

“No,” he said finally—simply, but with steel. Fox’s wide eyes got wider even as his brow furrowed. He seemed more confused and incredulous than put-out. Stranger brought Fox’s dick-stroking hand up to his mouth to kiss the palm. When he did, lingering along the twice-bisected heartline, he could see Fox’s surprised blink from the corners of his vision and smiled a little. “Not forever, just till you’re better. When it ain’t climbin’ on toward noon in the Mojave. When you’re in your _right_ mind and the right _head-space_. When I . . . can trust us _both_ to be on the same lines of the same page in the same book. When _you_ trust _me_ enough to tell me who you are and what you want in a language I can actually _understand_.” Fox actually flushed when Stranger cast a sardonic glance at him. “Then . . . yeah. _HelI_ , yeah, Fox . . . I would be over the goddamn _moon_ to have you. Honored and _privileged_. And I would do my best to see that you never regretted layin’ with me.”

 

With that said, Stranger fell silent and folded Fox’s hand between both of his own. He didn’t let their gazes break, even as he held their hands against the calmed beat of his heart. Neither did Fox, but that slight furrow between his pretty-bright eyes deepened.

 

“I shall, of course, accede to your wishes, _domine_ ,” he finally said, soft and formal and flustered, searching Stranger’s eyes as if for understanding. Then he suddenly lowered his gaze and his head with deep deference. “It was . . . disrespectful and lacking in gratitude to press the matter once your decision was made clear to me, and I shall in future endeavor to—”

 

Stranger silenced Fox with a kiss, short, sweet, and just a little dirty. When he broke it to lean his forehead against Fox’s once more, the other man bit back something that might have been a whimper. Stranger smiled.

 

“Ain’t no ‘pologies needed _or_ wanted. Only thing I want right now, is for you to know that . . . I care enough and _respect you_ enough to wait till you’re better and thinkin’ clearer. Am I . . . sayin’ somethin’ that _makes sense_ to you, Fox?”

 

Fox let out a shuddering breath, then nodded once with almost sullen reluctance. Stranger grinned in relief and bussed the other man’s lips tenderly.

 

“Good. Sometimes, things get turned-around in my head and on their way outta my mouth, and . . . well. Anyway.” Stranger cleared his throat. Then shivered as the fingertips of Fox’s free hand grazed along his cheekbone, then down to his scruffy jaw, contemplative and gentle.

 

“Such a sweet and generous rejection . . . _postponement_ ,” Fox corrected himself sardonically, before Stranger could. “You would be branded as weak and soft for such consideration, where I come from.”

 

“S’at so?” Stranger frowned and sighed. And started when Fox chuckled and kissed him teasingly, but sweetly.

 

“Yes. But I am _not_ where I come from. Not any longer. And that is . . . something I would do well to remember. And . . . appreciate.”

 

Grinning again, when Fox stole another kiss—and another and another—Stranger happily lost himself in it. In the desperate-needy clutch of Fox’s arms around his neck and the support Fox seemed to take from their clinching-embrace, and Stranger’s body and presence. . . .

 

And then came the advent of Deebs’ drippy-affectionate tongue right across both their faces, redolent of both dog breath _and_ raw gecko. It jolted them both out of their claiming-reassuring-consuming kisses with laughs that were almost guffaws. From Stranger, at least.

 

Fox, however, recoiled from the tongue, and the panting, happy whuffs that followed, all but hiding in Stranger’s arms with one of his own protecting his face. The plaintive and grossed-out sounds of startlement he made were weirdly endearing.

 

Adorable.

 

“Fox, this’s my best friend, Dog-Breath,” Stranger said in a laconic and introductory tone as Deebs licked his cheek again, all stink and sweetness. The narrow-eyed, waspish glare Fox gave him just made Stranger have to fight harder not to guffaw. “Most everyone just calls him _Deebs_ , since he ain’t particular ‘bout names. Deebsy . . . this is Fox.”

 

Deebs’ acknowledging bark was friendly and eager. Unreserved and excited. Stranger was quickly forgotten as Deebs leaned in to sniff at a patently horrified Fox for most of a minute.

 

When Deebs finally gave Fox the _Deebs’ Seal of Approval_ , which consisted of a happy-high bark and an attempt at another lick, Fox squawked and cringed in undignified alarm, and flapped his hand at Deebs in a shooing gesture.

 

Deebs clearly thought this was a game, for the way he whuffed and wagged his tail ceaselessly, nosing his way closer and closer to a disgruntled and still-alarmed Fox.

 

Stranger merely watched, and held Fox in his arms: just close and tight enough to keep him from wriggling away from Deebs entirely. . . .

 

Eventually, Fox wound up hiding his face against Stranger’s shoulder—with the sides of Stranger’s unbuttoned plaid over-shirt pulled up to aid in deflecting Deebs’ determined tongue—while Deebs tirelessly sought to lick that face clean off Fox’s head.

 

#

 

The rest of the day passed in sweaty, slow, but rather pleasant companionship.

 

Neither Stranger nor Fox were much inclined to talking, it seemed, though on the few occasions Fox broke the easy silence, Stranger was more than happy to be engaged in the brief, but layered observations and musings. In Fox’s seemingly random enquiries into Stranger’s life in Goodsprings, as well as about the town, itself.

 

Fox took all Stranger’s responses with interest and attentiveness, his pretty-pale eyes focused on Stranger’s eyes and face. His deferential requests for clarification or expansion seemed to simmer, like the heat of the desert and day around them. More often than not, Stranger got lost in _both_ , yet again, and before he knew it, they’d be kissing and clinching again. Hot-damp hands wound up clutching at shoulders and waist, hips and thighs. Burrowing under _acres_ of damned cloth. Stranger’s clothes—though baggy on him—weren’t quite tight on Fox’s rounded musculature. And they were _long_ , and they got in the way even when Fox’s hands shifted from Stranger’s biceps to his shoulders, or his shoulders to his scruffy cheeks.

 

“You . . . are a very tall man,” Fox noted finally, in a ragged pant. Deebs’d gone off on his hunt for supper halfway through a fiery sunset, and as soon as he’d disappeared down a slight incline, Stranger and Fox had been kissing and pawing at each other. And had kept at it with zeal, until surfacing for breath sometime just after twilight.

 

Now, Stranger huffed a laugh, burying his sweaty face in Fox’s neck for nips and kisses and licks. Fox’s hands, heretofore cupping Stranger’s face, moved lower, to clutch at his shoulders again.

 

“Uh . . . yeah. Sorry ‘bout that,” Stranger apologized, giddy and distracted and damned-near _floating_. Then he sucked another hickey into Fox’s throat while the other man hissed and moaned. “You taste _so good_ . . . I wanna lick every bit of salt from your body.”

 

Fox shivered as if cold, and made a soft, desperate sound high in his throat. His hands on Stranger’s shoulders tightened, his fingertips and nails digging into the damp, faded material of Stranger’s t-shirt.

 

“The . . . the things you say, Cameron. . . .”

 

Shortly after that, Stranger regained his sense of conscience and propriety, and levered his body up off Fox’s. The shorter man was lying sprawled and shaking in messy nest of bedroll, blanket, and removed clothing. His t-shirt was pushed half-off, revealing a still-pink torso that was starting to fade in places, but starting to peel in others. The fly of Stranger’s spare jeans was unbuttoned and the jeans themselves partially pushed down. Fox’s dick—red, but more from arousal, than overexposure or sunburn—stood out from pubes several shades lighter than the hair on his head.

 

Taking a deep, steadying, fortifying, not-at-all-helpful breath, Stranger forced himself to stop staring at Fox’s dick, which was unsurprisingly as pretty as the rest of him, and meet Fox’s dilated, hopeful gaze. He geared himself up to put a stop to what’d been brewing all damned day.

 

“Please,” Fox said simply, without pride or subterfuge, his gaze dropping to Stranger’s groin.

 

Stranger moaned and closed his eyes for a few moments. His belt was still buckled, but his fly was also unzipped and his own dick poking out.

 

“I _wanna_ , Fox . . . you got no idea how _bad_ I wanna. . . .”

 

“If you wish to wait until a later time to lay with me, I _will_ respect that wish. However, I . . . would ask that you refrain from torturing me with what I want and am not yet allowed,” Fox said stiffly, hints of strain and frustration crackling through his modulated tone.

 

Stranger opened his eyes to see Fox, lying as he had been, bared to the evening air and shivering even in the slight temperature drop that was herald of a much chillier night ahead. His dick was still hard, flushed, and wet from sweat and precome, and his pink-red face was averted and stony. His hands were perfectly still on his denim-clad thighs, between which, Stranger still knelt, as ambivalent as he’d ever been.

 

Dumb, and completely fucking useless.

 

 _No_ , he told himself. Told the faint, back-of-his-brain twinges that meant the maelstrom was sitting up and taking interest. That was the very last thing Stranger wanted in this moment. The first thing he wanted was to make Fox and himself feel _good_ , without anyone getting harmed or set-back in healing. _Not_ dumb _. And_ not useless _, either. Just flustered and . . . still sorta new. I_ know _what I want—what Fox and I_ both _want—and if I’m careful and patient, I think we can both have what we want, and what we_ need.

 

“Well,” Stranger said mildly, breathing heavy and wincing as his conscience continued to kick him square in the slats. Though he supposed it could’ve been far worse . . . the maelstrom could’ve been adding its two-cents, as well. “I reckon, close as you look to comin’, gettin’ you off quick and easy’d be more of a relief than leavin’ you to your own devices. Or with a case of blue-balls.”

 

Pale, distant eyes ticked to Stranger’s, cold . . . and maybe _hurt_ under that coldness.

 

“You need not extend yourself for my sake, Cameron. My self-control is not so compromised as to—” and the rest of whatever snooty-disdainful-dismissive thing Fox was working toward was lost to another kiss. Hard, thorough, and slow. Lost to Stranger’s body pinning his firmly—with some of his lean-leaden weight born up on his rangy arms and hands—then thrusting his dick against Fox’s.

 

“ _Yessss_ ,” Fox broke the kiss to hiss, as his fingers bit into Stranger’s shoulders with painful encouragement and anticipation. Then he gasped: “Yes! Please! _Yes_!”

 

Stranger pressed a few light kisses and nips to Fox’s bared, damp throat, then reclaimed those pretty lips gently. Then reclaimed Fox’s _mouth_ with far less gentility. His arms braced his body easily as he drove his hips down in short, sharp thrusts that Fox met with frantic eagerness, his legs wrapping tight and possessive around Stranger’s thighs.

 

“ _Domine_ ,” Fox purred, rough and practically snarling, when Stranger was at last beyond the necessary mental composure to kiss effectively, and was simply gasping and grunting and swearing on Fox’s cheek, his throat, his lips. “Please . . . may I come?”

 

“Yeah,” Stranger moaned, on the cusp himself and, after a few hard, fast thrusts, he pinned and pressed Fox into immobility. He latched onto the fragile, sweat-slippery skin below Fox’s left ear with worshipful lips, then with teeth that knew how to take and mark and own. “Come for me, Fox. Right now. _Fuck_ . . . _right now_ ,” he mumbled, laving his claim with a tongue that still hungered and thirsted for every bit of Fox it could get. He had a bright, momentary flash of wishing he’d thought to suck Fox off. Stranger had never come, even with direct stimulation. He had no idea if he even _could_ , let alone from stimulating someone else. But just the idea of tasting Fox like that, all _hothardsaltmusk_ was just . . . just. . . .

 

It was an almost-thought Stranger didn’t get to finish because, with a near-delicate gasp, Fox clutched at him tight. Arched up as much as he could under Stranger’s heavy bones, and came with a soft, surrendered groan that might’ve been a protracted sob.

 

The shock of Fox’s tense-limp body shaking and quaking under his, the twitch of Fox’s dick against his, and the wet-heat of a release that seemed to pain his partner was a revelation to Stranger. Even more than the first time Stranger’d opened his eyes in Doc Mitchell’s surgery to a world he still knew, but no longer understood.

 

This, then, was a piece of the world, explained. At long last, here was a piece of life that Stranger had _never suspected_ , let alone _expected to get back_.

 

Stranger groaned, too, now . . . loud and long as, with an odd, eternal stillness that shattered like crystal under an operatic high note, he came for the first time in his short life. The arms that’d born his weight were no longer doing their job. He was sprawled flat on Fox and rutting against him violently even as his balls emptied themselves seemingly beyond capacity. His right hand was grasping at Fox’s left thigh, tight and urgent, while his left, unaccountably, was braced alongside Fox’s head and cupping his right jaw as if holding a newborn chick.

 

Under him, gasping and whimpering in that not-Spanish language, Fox shuddered and bucked, convulsed and came.

 

Even as Stranger’s own body continued to unmake and recreate itself in pure white light that tingled and burned, he could feel each twitch and spurt of Fox’s release. Could feel the other man’s left hand grasping at his shoulder as if at salvation. His right carded through Stranger’s hair with fingers that tremored.

 

And then it _clenched_ tight in Stranger’s sweaty hair until the pain of that merged with the ecstasy of not just coming, but coming with and on and _for_ someone he. . . .

 

But even if Stranger’d had the wherewithal to finish the thought/feeling, he wouldn’t have been able to. The maelstrom might have—probably _could_ have—but Stranger couldn’t sense even the distant rumble of its thunder and mad laughter, now.

 

Stranger was too busy going . . . going. . . .

 

 _Gone_.

 

By the time Stranger returned to himself, drifting and slow, it was to Fox’s scent and skin, arms and flesh. Fox was almost exactly as Stranger remembered him being, from just before his first, apocalyptic orgasm destroyed him utterly.

 

But he’d been remade. _Rebuilt_ in Fox’s arms, which were still wrapped around his neck. And Fox’s firm, strong thighs bracketed his own like a protective corral. Stranger inhaled deeply, taking in the musky-salty scent of Fox’s skin, which he’d already imprinted on, like a baby duck. And which, apparently, his body wanted to reinforce. He held the breath as long as he could, then let it out in a soft, cool gust. Fox shivered.

 

“Mm . . . I prolly weigh a ton,” Stranger said, by way of apology, squeezing Fox’s hip—with a hand that’d gone stiff and crampy—before finally letting go. His other arm was curled up around and above Fox’s head, still, and half-off the bedroll. “Sorry . . . m’ bones’re made of lead.”

 

Fox hummed and sighed, his arms and thighs clutching tighter and keeping harder. ****“ _Dignus et fortis es, et_ honorata _sum ad te supra me,_ ” he murmured, lazy and content, absent and dreamy. He sounded half-awake, at best, and didn’t even fidget or complain under Stranger. At least not until Stranger started to shift and roll off him.

 

He clutched and kept more intently, locked-down around Stranger’s neck and thighs for a few moments . . . then, with a sigh, he loosened his grips and let Stranger go. Not that Stranger was inclined to move terribly far—or terribly quickly, once he discovered he and Fox were glued-together by a tacky, slightly-dried mixture of their come and sweat.

 

He huffed and glanced around them, squinting and blinking. The mostly-flat and supremely arid landscape was still and shadowed. Darkness, illuminated by the moon and stars overhead, reigned in the air and the cloudless sky. Nothing moved, and all was silent . . . but for Deebs’ deep breathing from a few yards distant. He was at least partially asleep, from the sound. He’d be snoring pretty soon, Stranger knew, if left undisturbed. Deebs dropped into sleep quicker and easier than any person or animal Stranger’d ever seen.

 

Shivering in air which, though leached of warmth, wasn’t quite chilly, yet—though, that, too, would happen fairly soon—he knew he ought to get the space-heater going, and food in Fox’s belly. In _both_ their bellies. But for a while, he could only lie about, appreciating the feel of Fox’s sturdy-firm body under his, and the knowledge that for now, anyway, the other man was safe and secure, sated and satisfied.

 

“Damn. Sorry,” he mumbled, when he finally took it into his head to pry their bodies apart. Even being careful, said prying resulted in some bitten-off hisses from Fox and grumbled swears from Stranger. But it was over and done, soon enough. And once they were separated with minimal loss of skin, hair, and patches of clothing, Stranger settled on his side—partly on the ground—next to Fox.

 

For such a compact man, he certainly took up _all_ his share of the single-person bedroll, and then some.

 

Stranger snorted and propped himself up on his right elbow, placing his left hand on the sticky-sweaty center of Fox’s sternum. His pink-red skin was still warm, still irritated and peeling in places, but it felt nice. Felt right and _necessary_ , like a deep breath in after Stranger had been going without for . . . the entire year and five months of his life.

 

A glance at Fox’s pink-red face showed that the other man was smiling absently, his healing lips quirked in a deliciously wicked curve. His eyes were closed, and his expression was—despite the peeling skin of forehead, nose, and chin—quite content.

 

Stranger’s hand traveled up Fox’s defined sternum, to his steady, strong heartbeat.

 

That absent-contented expression relaxed even further, deepening as Stranger traced slow, light circles around Fox’s right, then left nipple with a callused, but reverent fingertip.

 

“ _Domine_ ,” Fox mumbled, though it was still practically a purr. Stranger shivered and wondered what the word meant. He thought it’d be nice if it was a term of endearment, but then . . . from the little he knew of Fox . . . that seemed unlikely.

 

 _I guess he’ll tell me in his own time_ , he thought, and right on the heels of it: _Or not. But he damn-sure ain’t gonna tell me if I_ ask _._

 

“I didn’t know it’d feel like that,” he ventured, easily putting aside the question of Fox’s aversion to candor, and other character-insights for the moment. He felt too giddy to entertain such weighty thoughts. Both lost and invigorated. Reborn. The smile that curved his bitten lips was wry but goofy. _Self-aware_ but _don’t-care_. “Comin’, I mean. I supposed it’d feel good, the way scratchin’ an itch does? But I didn’t know . . . I never, uh . . . could never seem to . . . get myself to that point on my own.”

 

A fine, brief line appeared just above Fox’s nose and between his eyebrows, then disappeared. His pretty-pale eyes fluttered open, locking immediately on Stranger. They were utterly unshielded for a few moments: sated and hungry, devouring and devoted. And then, they were shuttered once more, half-lidded and amused.

 

“Have you never . . . this is your first time achieving sexual release,” he murmured, sounding weirdly pleased by that. Pleased and _smug_. Stranger blushed and looked down at his tracing, circling fingertip. Ran it back and forth across Fox’s nipple until it stiffened, and Fox’s breathing wasn’t so deep and steady.

 

“Yep,” Stranger finally said, popping the “P” and frowning. “Never could seem to get there on my own, and . . . well, wasn’t like there was a long line of folk _waitin’_ to pitch-in, if y’follow.”

 

Fox reached up and ran precise, feather-light fingers along Stranger’s fuzzed, stubborn-prominent jawline. His touch made Stranger shiver and close his eyes for long moments . . . even after Fox’s hand returned to the bedroll. Reluctantly, or so Stranger wanted to believe.

 

“Was there . . . was there _no one_ in your Goodsprings possessed of the ability to appreciate that which is . . . of great potential and inherent value? Or, barring that, was there no one possessed of at least _middling_ visual acuity?”

 

Stranger frowned a bit more as he took a few seconds to parse all that. Then he smirked a little, meeting Fox’s ice-hot gaze. “Uhhh . . . did you just _compliment_ me? You implyin’ that I’m _good-lookin’_?”

 

Fox blinked, seeming startled for a second, before sniffing, then wriggling a little under Stranger’s continued ministrations. “I . . . am implying that your neighbors are either perceptually dull or factually blind. Or perhaps both.” Another sniff, haughty and dismissive, followed by a soft gasp as Stranger leaned down to lick the nipple he’d been teasing and tormenting. “You m-may take that as a compliment, if you wish.”

 

“Hmm. Then I surely will, and thank you kindly,” Stranger kissed onto the warm skin in which Fox’s accelerated heartbeat echoed. Fox shivered, and Stranger went back to licking, sucking, and tugging on Fox’s nipple with tongue, lips, and teeth. It wasn’t too much longer until Fox’s right hand was clenched in Stranger’s hair again and trying to draw his head somehow closer. His left hand was warm and light on Stranger’s ribs, shifting between them, and his waist and hip. _Restless_ , as if hesitant to go for the rapidly burgeoning hardness between them.

 

His own, or Stranger’s.

 

“May I . . . touch you?” Fox whispered, his fingers curling and clenching in Stranger’s t-shirt, all desire and restraint. “May I touch you?”

 

“Yes. Always,” Stranger left off worrying Fox’s nipple for a few moments, to say, then blew across the wet and sensitized area. When Fox choked back a squawk that turned into a moan, Stranger smiled and dropped a tender kiss on the abused flesh. Then he looked up into Fox’s wide, slightly dazed eyes. “Anywhere you want. Um . . . is it . . . are you okay with me touchin’ _you_?  Are you . . . feelin’ tired or dizzy or dehydrated? Headachy? Is—”

 

Stranger fell silent when the fingers in his hair clenched tight enough to make him gasp and swear . . . but not in displeasure. Which surprised _him_ , but made Fox smile as if he’d received an affirmation. Or confirmation.

 

Though, of what, Stranger couldn’t imagine.

 

“To understate, _I feel fine_ , Cameron, all things considered. A little tired, yes, but otherwise quite well. Certainly, well _enough_. And yes,” Fox asserted, all white, sharp smile even in the deepening gloom of evening. The smile was nonetheless lacking in his usual edges, and bordering on _soft_. “You may touch me, as well, wherever you desire to. Always.”

 

Stranger sighed, but held Fox’s gaze. “It’s a given that I’ll always wanna touch you everywhere, Fox. But I won’t if that ain’t what _you_ want. If that _ain’t_ what’s best for you. If it ain’t . . . _healthy_ for you.”

 

Fox’s smile turned wondering and bemused, before settling into indulgent near-fondness. “You are . . . sweet. A Samaritan and a gentleman. Such a rarity in this degenerate time and place,” he said lightly, as if this was of no real consequence. But his hand came up to cup Stranger’s face, heavy and gentle, like a benediction. Like _claiming_ , tentative and nascent though it was.

 

By the time they stopped gazing and taking each other’s measure, Deebs’ breathing had become deep snoring and the air had gained a definite bite. The light of the rising, waning moon was cold and stark.

 

Stranger smirked, and kissed Fox’s chest once more, before reapplying himself to Fox’s left nipple with dedication and focus. The wanton, needy sounds Fox made were more of an intoxicant than any booze or chems Stranger could remember trying . . . not that he could remember _any_ , except for midnight moonshine with the doc on New Year’s and on _his_ “birthday.”

 

Fox’s hand was soon drifting back down Stranger’s torso, pausing to give Stranger’s right nipple a fleeting, sharp tweak, before slipping into the brief lacuna between their bodies.

 

“Yeah,” Stranger mumbled around and licked onto Fox’s nipple, even as he reached down to push Fox’s once more hesitant hand exactly where he needed it. Then he grunted when Fox grasped him with exploratory firmness. The first strokes that followed were measured and testing, but sure and proficient enough to wring low groans from Stranger.

 

Then, after Stranger had shifted more into Fox’s grip, eager and desperate, Fox’s hand moved lower, cupping his balls with consideration and hope. Stranger felt Fox’s shiver move through them both as that hot, hungry hand tightened on him.

 

And tightened some more.

 

It continued to tighten until Stranger was gasping again, his face pressed to Fox’s heartbeat, his hands braced to either side of Fox’s body.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore, soft, but vehement. A little afraid, but a _lot_ turned-on. His dick felt as if it was gearing up to explode and his balls ached from Fox’s minute fondling and vise-like grip. “Oh, fuck, _Fox_. . . .”

 

“Does this please you, _domine_?” Fox whispered, breathless and hard, the tip of his dick leaving wet evidence on Stranger’s stomach of his own derived pleasure.

 

“If you ever do somethin’ that _don’t_ please me . . . you’ll be the first to know, I promise. _Tighter_ ,” Stranger added, grit-toothed and tense, feeling the supernova-heat of a release building at the base of spine and dick, and all throughout the balls Fox was squeezing ever more intensely. Soon, Stranger was shaking and rutting against air, wanting some kind of friction, but definitely not wanting Fox to let go of his balls to give it to him. And he had a feeling that, for once, stimulation or not, he wasn’t going have trouble coming . . . this time, or ever again.

 

“Fuck . . . oh, fuck, _yeah_ ,” he moaned, latching on to Fox’s nipple once more, which earned him a deep, filthy rumble of approval. Remembering his manners, he shifted a little and felt between them—carefully, so as not to disturb Fox’s hand—for Fox’s dick. Then his balls. Then the small, damp, tiny stretch of skin behind them, rubbing-rubbing-rubbing, teasing-teasing-teasing.

 

“Oh!” Fox kept gasping and moaning, even as his hand tightened incrementally, with machine-like precision. *****“ _Quo dolore miscebitur et cum volebam intra me. . ._ placet. . . .”

 

Stranger angled his questing index finger, and pressed and rubbed the vulnerable territory just before Fox’s asshole, and got a deep groan and deeper shudder in response. Then, he scraped his fingernail slow and purposeful, back up along that sensitive bit of skin like a threat and a promise. Fox went tense and still beneath him, but for the hand around Stranger’s balls. _That_ reflexively tightened faster and harder than was meant or expected, and Fox made a breathless, broken-open sound that was equal parts whimper and sob.

 

Then he started to come _hard_. Like he’d been hit in the gut with a cannonball. As a consequence, every bit of him, including that cruel, perfect hand, locked-down like a triggered security system. For a moment, Stranger was certain Fox was about to literally pulverize his balls in that crazy-tight grip.

 

 _Worth it_ , he decided with a giddy sort of serenity, just before Fox’s body and hand relaxed and released, respectively. And then that hand moved, more on instinct than design, to Stranger’s aching, over-sensitized dick and set up a clumsy, rhythmless stroke.

 

Between the slippery, unsophisticated, _perfect_ glide of Fox’s hand, and the lingering near-agony in Stranger’s balls, he, too, came: devastating, powerful, and consuming. His raw, hoarse shouts of completion rebounded off the land and sky for miles, and woke up Deebs, to boot.

 

#

 

**Translated phrases:**

*“You are breathtaking, and I desire you fiercely.”

**“Command me to call you ‘ _master_ ,’ and I shall. . . .”

***“. . . have never once had a lover of my own choosing.”

****“You are strong and worthy, and I am _honored_ to have you above me.”

*****“How I ache with wanting you inside me . . . _please_. . . .”

 

TBC

**Author's Note:**

> Ghostofshe’s prompt: Betrayal. 
> 
> (NGL, so . . . credit where credit is due: ALL good, Fallout-related things come to me from Ghostofshe ::loves:: Plus, if you’re not reading [Fire & Water](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8285711/chapters/18981743), you’re missing out on the BEST Vulpes Inculta you’ll ever read. And the hottest.) 
> 
> How’m I doin’, so far?
> 
> [Tumbly-wumbly, timey-wimey stuff](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)?


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